An intensely intellectual painter Robert Motherwell is renowned for his distinctive Abstract
Expressionist style. The seminal artist permeated his gestural works with an expressionism and
austerity reflective of the human psyche at the same time his oeuvre addressed political and
humanitarian themes. Robert Motherwell: Pure Painting is an in-depth exploration of his
artistic practice. Leading art scholars examine the American artist's turn from Surrealism to
abstraction and analyze the major series that developed over his fifty-year career. The
catalogue studies the dialogue between Motherwell's art and the nineteenth-century French
painting tradition investigates his relationship to Spanish techniques and processes with an
emphasis on their underlying political significance and delves into Motherwell's use of ochre
pigment with its evocation of both deep geological time and avant-garde practices. In 1940s
New York City ROBERT MOTHERWELL (*1915 Aberdeen WA-1991 Provincetown MA) entered a milieu
of artists whose radical new style of painting came to be known as Abstract Expressionism. A
theorist of this informal group - including artists such as Mark Rothko Jackson Pollock and
Willem de Kooning - he taught throughout his life.
