With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Robert Motherwell
Education/Curation, Painting/Drawing, Printmaking
1915 – 1991
Motherwell was a founding figure in the development of the abstract expressionist movement in the 1940s, and throughout the rest of his life he was a thoughtful spokesman and advocate for abstract art. His philosophical underpinning can be glimpsed in works that spoke to political themes, such as the ‘Elegy to the Spanish Republic’ series, or explored artistic output within defined parameters, as with the ‘Lyric Suite’ and ‘Open’ series. He began the Daedulus Foundation in 1981 to carry forward his life’s work of teaching about and supporting modern art.
- Biography/Description of Work
Abstract expressionist painter and printmaker Robert Motherwell grew up in California. He began his education with the study of philosophy, obtaining a BA from Stanford University and enrolling in Harvard’s PhD program. He had also studied painting from 1932 to 1937, and in 1940 left Harvard, moved to New York City and soon pivoted full-time to painting. He met and was influenced by Surrealists such as Max Ernst, Marcel DuChamp and Roberto Matta. He learned about ‘automatism’ (the concept of tapping into the unconscious when drawing) from Matta during a 1941 trip to Mexico. During the 1950s, the artist taught painting at Hunter College, New York, and Black Mountain College, North Carolina, in turn influencing artists such as Cy Twomby, Robert Raschenberg and Kenneth Noland. Over the years, he exhibited his work throughout America and Europe. Motherwell bought a property in Greenwich CT in 1970, and began living there full time the following year with his third wife, Renate Ponsold an art photographer (his second wife was Helen Frankenthaler, another prominent abstract expressionist).
Several major retrospectives of Motherwell’s art were organized over the years during his lifetime: in 1965 by the Museum of Modern Art (which subsequently traveled to European venues); in the 1970s again at European venues; in 1983 at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo New York (which then showed in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC and the Guggenheim Museum back in New York; and in 1991 (shortly before his death) at galleries in Mexico, California and Texas.
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