Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell ( born January 24, 1915 in Aberdeen, Washington; † July 16, 1991 in Provincetown, Massachusetts ) was an American painter of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.
Life and work
Motherwell studied in the years 1932 to 1938, first at the California School of Fine Arts and then at Stanford University philosophy, where he made the Bachelorbschluss. In addition, he studied philosophy and French literature at Harvard University. After a two-year stay from 1938 to 1939 in Paris, where he became friends with, among others, the later European exile artists Piet Mondrian and Fernand Léger, Motherwell studied in New York at Columbia University with Meyer Schapiro and Kurt Seligmann Art History. In 1940 he met Robert Matta, with whom he is still in the same year took a trip to Mexico. In 1945 he taught at Black Mountain College, North Carolina. Between 1951 and 1958, Motherwell has held a teaching position at Hunter College in New York.
His drawings and large-format paintings are characterized by dominant black punctuations. From the 1960s an approach to the Color Field Painting by Morris Louis took place. Motherwell was one of the most important representatives of American Abstract Expressionism. Usually he is assigned to the Action Painting, but he is considered the more " intellectual counterpart " to painters such as Jackson Pollock. He founded 1947/1948 together with William Baziotes, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman school "Subjects of the Artists ".
He was married to the painter Helen Frankenthaler.