Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell 1915-91, American painter and writer, b. Aberdeen, Wash. Motherwell taught art at several colleges and during the early 1940s he became a cogent theoretician of abstract expressionism . His canvases are characterized by large, amorphous shapes, painted in strong, austere colors. His most famous body of work is a series of over 100 paintings entitled Elegy for the Spanish Republic (1948-90). He also created numerous masterful collages and more than 500 editions of prints. He was married for several years to the painter Helen Frankenthaler . Motherwell edited Documents of Modern Art (15 vol., 1944-61), Modern Artists in America (1952), The Dada Painters and Poets (1951), and Documents of 20th-Century Art (1971-80). His keen critical powers and abundant intellectual gifts are evident in his many essays, brought together in The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell (1993).

Bibliography: See biographies by H. H. Arnason and S. P. Breckinridge (1982), D. Ashton and J. Flam (1983), and R. S. Mattison (1989); S. Engberg, Robert Motherwell: The Complete Prints 1940-1991 (2004).

Motherwell, Robert (1915–91) US painter and writer. Motherwell was a pioneer of abstract expressionism. Perhaps his best-known work is the series Elegies to the Spanish Republic. He was the editor of the influential The Documents of Modern Art series (1944–57).