Irwin Hollander was a master lithographer who worked closely with many of the great Abstract Expressionist painters in the 1960s to help revive fine art printing in America. An artist himself, Hollander turned to working in commercial lithography in the 1950s to make ends meet. The company he worked for allowed Hollander to use their equipment at night for his own artistic pursuits, which caught the notice of artist June Wayne. She had recently opened Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles and invited Hollander to become their first master printer – cementing his career as a fine art printer and advocate for lithography as an art form.
Moving back to New York in the mid-1960s, Hollander set up his own print shop, Hollander Workshop, on the Lower East Side. Early works published in the workshop were by Leonard Baskin and Robert Motherwell, leading to the publishing of Portfolio 9 in 1967 which included works from nine artists: Willem de Kooning, Sam Francis, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Lindner, Robert Motherwell, Louise Nevelson, Henry Pearson, and Saul Steinberg. Following this series, Hollander went on to work with many of these artists individually and is noted for convincing Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell that their artistic styles would be well-suited to lithography, eventually leading to a significant body of prints by both artists.
One of the youngest proponents of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Robert Motherwell rose to critical acclaim with his first solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery in 1944. Not only was Motherwell one of the major practicing Abstract Expressionist artists, he was, in fact, the main intellectual driving force within the movement—corralling fellow New York painters such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hoffman and William Baziotes into his circle. Motherwell later coined the term the "New York School", a designation synonymous to Abstract Expressionism that loosely refers to a wide variety of non-objective work produced in New York between 1940 and 1960.
During an over five-decade-long career, Motherwell created a large and powerful body of varied work that includes paintings, drawings, prints and collages. Motherwell's work is most generally characterized by simple shapes, broad color contrasts and a dynamic interplay between restrained and gestural brushstrokes. Above all, it demonstrates his approach to art-making as a response to the complexity of lived, and importantly felt, experience.