Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell – Life, Career, and Famous Quotes

Explore the life, art, philosophy, and legacy of Robert Motherwell — one of America’s great abstract expressionists. Dive deep into his biography, his major works (like Elegies to the Spanish Republic), his influences, and his most memorable quotes.

Introduction: Who Was Robert Motherwell?

Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American painter, printmaker, and advocate of modern art, widely recognized as one of the most articulate voices of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Born with a delicate health as a child, he developed a temperament of introspection and solitude, but also a fierce dedication to artistic expression. Over his long career, he not only produced paintings, collages, and prints but also edited and wrote about art, contributing to the intellectual backbone of postwar American modernism.

Today, Motherwell is celebrated not just for his visual output but for his role as a mediator between philosophy, literature, and painting. His work explored tensions of emotion, politics, and the unconscious, making his legacy still relevant in contemporary discussions of abstraction, art theory, and the role of the artist in society.

Early Life and Family

Robert Burns Motherwell III was born in Aberdeen, Washington on January 24, 1915, the first child of Robert Burns Motherwell II and Margaret Lilian Hogan.

Young Motherwell was introduced early to art. As a boy he copied works by Cézanne and other masters, and he was deeply influenced by the visual expanses and bright colors of California landscapes. His early sensitivity to the world around him and his health challenges together shaped his inner life and later artistic ambitions.

Youth and Education

From 1932 to 1937, Motherwell studied at Stanford University, graduating with a degree in philosophy.

Though his initial training was philosophical and literary rather than painterly, he also took some art courses — for example, he studied briefly at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

Under pressure from his father to ensure financial stability, Motherwell agreed to pursue a Ph.D. (not because he wanted to teach, but to gain latitude) in exchange for an allowance.

In New York, he also encountered Surrealist artists and ideas, and the notion of automatism (automatic drawing) made a profound impact on his evolving method.

Career and Achievements

From New York Emergence to the New York School

In the 1940s, Motherwell settled in New York, joining the circle of emerging modernists. At Columbia, under Schapiro’s guidance, he was exposed to European modernism, Surrealism, and American avant-garde ideas. VVV and was on the editorial board of DYN, Wolfgang Paalen’s journal.

By the mid-1940s, Motherwell was exhibiting his work. In 1944 he had a one-man show at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery, and the Museum of Modern Art acquired one of his works. Subjects of the Artist School (1948–1949) in New York, which hosted public lectures from figures like Jean Arp and John Cage.

Motherwell’s dual role as artist and thinker earned him the position of spokesman for modern abstraction. He edited The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology (1951), which made Dada and Surrealist texts more accessible to English readers, thus strengthening cross-disciplinary dialogue.

Major Series and Mature Work

One of Motherwell’s signature contributions is the Elegies to the Spanish Republic series, which he returned to throughout his life.

In the 1950s and 1960s, he developed various series: Je t’aime (paintings suffused with romantic or emotional resonance) Open (a long‐running series exploring spatial ambiguity)

During the 1960s, he had major retrospectives both in the U.S. and in Europe, including a 1965 show at MoMA that traveled to cities like Amsterdam, London, and Brussels. Dublin 1916, with Black and Tan, a large mural‐scale work evocative of heroism and political history.

Later in life, Motherwell continued producing vigorously. In the 1970s, he moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, creating separate studios for painting, collage, and printmaking. Ulysses.

In recognition of his achievements, Motherwell was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal in 1985. Dedalus Foundation in 1981, which supports research, education, publications, and exhibitions on modern art.

Historical Milestones & Context

Motherwell’s career unfolded against the backdrop of dramatic shifts in 20th-century art and world history. Several contextual threads shaped his trajectory:

• The shift from European to American Modernism: After World War II, New York became a new epicenter of avant-garde art. Motherwell and his peers (Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning) helped pivot the center of abstract innovation from Paris to New York.

• Surrealism and Automatism: Through contacts with exiled Surrealists in New York and his time in Mexico, Motherwell absorbed ideas about automatism and the unconscious, integrating them into his approach to abstraction and spontaneity.

• Political undercurrents: The Elegies series explicitly evokes Spain’s republic, civil war, and loss. Though abstract, the works carry weighty associations of mourning, resistance, and historical trauma.

• Criticism and institutional embrace: As America’s art institutions matured, so did acceptance of abstraction. Motherwell was among those who bridged the gap between avant-garde practice and scholarly discourse, writing, editing, lecturing, and shaping public understanding.

• Interdisciplinary influences: Motherwell’s literary and philosophical education continuous to inform his style. He often viewed painting as a form of thought, not mere decoration.

Legacy and Influence

Robert Motherwell’s legacy extends far beyond individual paintings.

• Intellectual bridge: He was among the few painters who maintained a rigorous engagement with theory, criticism, literature, and philosophy—and thus helped legitimize abstract art in academic and public spheres.

• Dedalus Foundation: His foundation remains active in promoting scholarship, exhibitions, publications, and archival access, sustaining dialogue around modernism.

• Influence on younger artists: Motherwell taught at institutions like Hunter College and Black Mountain College. Artists such as Cy Twombly, Kenneth Noland, and Robert Rauschenberg were influenced by his teaching and example.

• Art historical stature: At his death, critics like Clement Greenberg, a staunch defender of Abstract Expressionism, called him “one of the very best of the abstract expressionist painters.”

• Enduring curiosity: His works—especially the Elegies and Open series—remain in major collections and continue to be reinterpreted in exhibitions and scholarship.

• Cross-disciplinary resonance: Because his art so consciously engages emotion, politics, and abstraction, it invites readings from philosophical, psychoanalytic, literary, and critical theory perspectives.

Personality and Talents

Motherwell was at once introspective and socially engaged. While health and temperament inclined him toward solitude, he was generous in mentorship, conversation, and collaboration. His writings and lectures show a generous mind keen to share insight and inspire others.

His greatest talent was in synthesizing: he merged emotional intensity with intellectual rigor, visual spontaneity with poetic restraint. He regarded painting as a form of thought—never incidental, always conscious.

He also had a keen sense of layering—visually by collage, materially through found objects, and conceptually through references to poetry, history, and loss. In his later years, his relationship with printmaking (especially via his collaboration with Catherine Mosley) became a significant outlet for experimentation.

Famous Quotes of Robert Motherwell

Here are several memorable quotations that reflect Motherwell’s thinking about art, process, and feeling:

“One cuts and chooses and shifts and pastes, and sometimes tears off and begins again.”

“Every intelligent painter carries the whole culture of modern painting in his head. It is his real subject, of which everything he paints in both an homage and a critique, and everything he says is a gloss.”

“I begin a painting with a series of mistakes. The painting comes out of the correction of mistakes by feeling.”

“Painting is a medium in which the mind can actualize itself; it is a medium of thought.”

“It is sometimes forgotten how much wit there is in certain works of abstract art. There is a certain point in undergoing anguish when one encounters the comic.”

“Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.”

These quotes reveal key themes in his art: the primacy of process, the intersection of intellect and emotion, the tension between order and spontaneity, and the inseparability of life and art.

Lessons from Robert Motherwell

1. Embrace the imperfect — process matters
   Motherwell’s openness to “mistakes” and revision teaches that art (and life) are rarely linear. The act of adjusting, erasing, and reworking is intrinsic to growth.

2. Think deeply, paint freely
   His philosophy-poetical education was not separable from his work. He suggests that deep thought and free expression aren’t opposites but complementary.

3. Let ambiguity persist
   Many of Motherwell’s paintings resist final resolution. That open-endedness invites the viewer into active meaning-making.

4. Bridge disciplines
   Motherwell shows that art need not be isolated. Literature, politics, philosophy, and history all enrich and aggravate one another in meaningful ways.

5. Sustain a legacy through generosity
   By founding the Dedalus Foundation and remaining active in writing, teaching, and editing, he shows that an artist’s responsibility includes stewardship of ideas.

Conclusion

Robert Motherwell remains a compelling figure not simply because of his striking canvases, but because he embodied the unity of art and intellect. His life bridged philosophy, poetry, politics, and visual form. The Elegies to the Spanish Republic, the Open series, and his many writings continue to speak across generations, urging us to view abstraction not as an escape but as engagement—full of feeling, history, and reflection.

If you’d like to explore more of Motherwell’s paintings, or dive deeper into his collected writings and philosophy, I’d be happy to suggest books, exhibitions, or essays.