Motherwell, Robert

Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) is an American painter and printmaker, arguably the most intellectual of his generation. A graduate of Stanford University in Palo Alto, he also studied music, psychoanalysis and philosophy, a subject he studied at Harvard University. During a trip to France in 1935, he met the Surrealists and became friend with André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Roberto Matta and other members of the group. Even though he rubbed shoulders with the surrealists, he never accepted the label of surrealist. Rather, he considered himself an abstract expressionist. Returning to the USA, he practiced automatic writing with Jackson Pollock and befriended Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. He is considered as one of the great American Abstract Expressionist painters.

He represented the USA at the Venice Biennale in 1950 and at the São Paulo Biennale in 1961.