Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell was one of the founders of Abstract Expressionism, and was generally regarded as the most articulate spokesman for this style. Although he was especially influenced by the Surrealist artists, including Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy and André Masson, he remained largely self-taught. Motherwell’s abstract expressionist paintings show his continuous development of a limited repertory of simple, serene, and massive forms that are applied in black paint to the picture plane in such a way that they generate a sense of slow, solemnly suggestive movement. He received his first one-man show in 1944 at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Century Gallery in New York City.