Robert Motherwell: Pure Painting

Exhibition at the Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, 4 June - 17 September 2023

In 1940s New York, Robert Motherwell (1915 -1991) entered a milieu of artists whose radical new style of painting became known as Abstract Expressionism. An intensely intellectual painter, the American artist imbued his gestural works with an expressionism and austerity that reflected the human psyche, while also addressing political and humanitarian themes.

This exhibition catalogue offers an in-depth study of Motherwell's artistic practice. The artist's transition from surrealism to abstraction is analysed, as are the main series he developed over the course of his fifty-year career. The book also examines the dialogue between Motherwell's art and the tradition of nineteenth-century French painting, his relationship with Spanish techniques and processes, emphasising their underlying political significance, and the artist's use of the pigment ochre, which evokes both deep geological times and avant-garde practices.