Robert Motherwell

Happy Birthday Robert Motherwell! Robert Motherwell was an abstract Expressionist, born in 1915, America. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from Stanford in philosophy and began graduate work at Harvard, before traveling Europe and “discovering” himself as a painter. He moved to Greenwich Village in 1941 to begin painting fulltime. He worked for a time at Jackson Pollock’s studio. For abstract expressionists, the act of painting is just as or more important as the final work. “Through gestural movements the artist is attempting to unleash their raw emotions, not paint pretty pictures.” Motherwell created his art through drawing, painting and collage, becoming the first abstract expressionist to embrace printmaking, printing limited editions of his work. Below is a painting from perhaps his most “famous” series, Elegy to The Spanish Republic. Robert Motherwell died in 1991.