(Robert Motherwell obituary, continued)
Mr. Motherwell was still working and exhibiting at the time of his death. "From the Studio," a group of his latest paintings, appeared at his dealer, Knoedler & Company, last month, and a touring retrospective of his work will open on Sept. 5 at the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico City. Over the last 25 years, he executed special commissions for such prestigious sites as the East Wing of the National Gellery of Art in Washington, the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston and the Stanford University Law School in California. In 1965 he was given a retrospective show by the Museum of Modern Art that traveled to major European cities, and since 1975 he had shows in Stockholm, Vienna, Paris, Edinburgh, London, Barcelona, Mexico City and Madrid.
A 40-year retrospective organized in 1983 by the Albright-Knox Gallery of Art in Buffalo traveled to five other institutions across the United States, ending at the Guggenheim Museum in New York during the 1984-85 season. On that occasion, John Russell, then chief art critic of The New York Times, wrote of Mr. Motherwell:
"Among champions of high culture, he has kept to a policy of 'no compromise'. Not for him the contaminations of popular culture or the wish to get clear once and for all of criteria first formulated in Europe. In his writing, his teaching and his conversation, he has kept open a direct line to the European past, no matter whether the great spirits under discussion are Velazquez or Piero della Francesca, Mozart or Mallarme, Goya or Baudelaire. And if he seems to see himself not only as the admirer of these people, but also their peer, it is for the work to justify that idea, rather than for the artist to repress it."
A TEACHER AND AN EDITOR
Mr. Motherwell's teaching stints included Black Mountain College in North Carolina, Oberlin College and Brown University. From 1951 to 1958, he was associate professor of art at Hunter College.
As an editor, he originated "Documents of 20th Century Art," a continuing series published by Viking Press from 1968 to 1980 and then by G. K. Hall in Boston, that presents the original writings of artists, among them Picasso, Lipchitz, Arp, Duchamp, Leger, Apollinaire, Henry Moore, Ad Reinhardt and Piet Mondrian.
The best-known theme in Mr. Motherwell's paintings is "Elegy to the Spanish Republic," a compositional scheme of ovoids alternating with vertical bars, most often in black and white. The motif, first developed in 1948, has recurred in more than 100 canvases over the years, to the point where the artist himself was ruefully aware that some critics regarded it as a formula. "When he gets stuck, what should he do but make another 'Elegy"?" he quoted one as saying.
He explained that the "Elegy" paintings, originally a tribute to the republic that died in the Spanish Civil War, were not meant to be political, but rather "general metaphors of the contrast between life and death and their inter-relation." And in an interview with the art historian Jack D. Flam published in the catalogue for the Albright-Knox show, he characterized them as "for the most part, public statements."
"They reflect the internationalist in me," he said, "interested in the historical forces of the 20th century, with strong feelings about the conflicting forces in it."
CONTINUED