Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art

Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell was an American abstract expressionist painter, who was one the first artist to have properties in his work that were accidental. Robert at only eleven years old received a scholarship to study art but actually preferred academics and went on to study aesthetics at Harvard and Stanford. It was later in life that he started to create art again in 1941. He was a great admirer of surrealism, and painted figurative works with surrealistic influence. In 1949 he created a series called “Elegy to the Spanish Republic.” Over the next three decades he painted near 150 versions of these elegys showing the progression of simple and large black forms that created a sense of slow movement in his work. This was where his distinctive abstract expressionistic work began. He went on to teach at Hunter College, and wrote many essays about art. He was considered to be the best spokesman for abstract expressionism at the time. I’m not a huge fan of Robert Motherwells work, his use of bold black shapes does invoke a sort of solemn blunt feeling but I don’t know if I fully understand his work. Though his work does all tend to give me the same feeling of dark eeriness that I can appreciate for its distinct recognizable qualities.

Works Cited

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Robert Motherwell.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 12 July 2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Motherwell.