Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell was a major figure in the birth and development of Abstract Expressionism and the youngest member of the New York School - a term he coined - which brought him close to Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. His career spanned five decades, during which time he created some of the most iconic images of the twentieth century. A passionate advocate and articulate spokesman for Abstract Expressionism, he believed that ideas and emotions were best communicated through the bold forms and gestural lines of abstract art. He studied philosophy at Stanford University and art history at Columbia University under Meyer Shapiro and obtained a doctorate from Harvard. In the 1940s and 1950s, he lectured at Black Mountain College in North Carolina - where he taught Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly - and later at Hunter College in New York. His major series include his Elegies to the Spanish Republic, Beside the Sea, the Lyric Suite and the Open series. Motherwell founded the Dedalus Foundation in 1981 in order to foster public understanding of modern art and modernism. He has exhibited worldwide, and his work can be found in the collections of major art institutions including Tate in London; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice; the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Museum of Modern Art in New York; the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

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