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Robert Motherwell
1915 - 1991

American
Abstract Expressionism/ New York School
Painters, Printmakers
Though East Hampton figures briefly in the life of the painter Robert Motherwell, the village played a significant role in shaping his career and his legacy. The youngest, wealthiest, and best educated of the Abstract Expressionists, Motherwell first came to the East End during the summer of 1944 to visit the older Surrealists in exile. A snapshot records the twenty-four-year-old playing chess with Max Ernst outdoors in Amagansett. In the Hamptons, Motherwell met Mark Rothko and other American artists; painted the semi-figurative works The Emperor of China and The Homely Protestant; initiated his most critically acclaimed series, Elegy to the Spanish Republic; and coedited the lone issue of the journal possiblities. Oils featuring linear, somewhat representational forms on ocher-covered surfaces eventually gave way to canvases with larger-scaled, more muscular black and white shapes. After he purchased a four-acre lot at the corner of Georgica and Jericho roads in East Hampton for about $1,200, Motherwell commissioned a house and studio from Pierre Chareau, the French architect who co-designed the Maison de Verre, a Paris landmark of the International Style. Although the architect used two prefabricated Quonset hut kits purchased for $3,000 each, costs mounted when doors, windows, balconies, and flooring had to be made by hand. Motherwell sold the house in 1952. Chareau’s only work in America, it was leveled in 1985. Motherwell later summered in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and spent his last years in Greenwich, Connecticut. In his seventies, he said about his East Hampton period, “I did my best work there.” [Phyllis Tuchman]
Image not available for view

Image not available for view


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External Resources
    The Dedalus Foundation
    Archives of American Art Oral History Interview
    Director Terrie Sultan speaks about the Parrish Collection on NYC- ARTS
Organizations and Events
  • Hayter's Atelier 17
    (member)
  • Universal Limited Art Editions
    (member)
  • the Eighth Street Club The Club
    (member)
  • Black Mountain College
    (employed faculty member)
  • 10 East Hampton Abstractionists, 1950
    (was included in)
  • Dreams for the Next Century: A View of the Collection
    (was included in)
  • "In Memory of My Feelings": Frank O'Hara and American Art
    (was included in)
  • Conversations Around A Collection: Acquisitions 1999-2001
    (was included in)
  • The Stamp of Impulse: Abstract Expressionist Prints
    (was included in)
  • Esteban Vicente: Portrait of the Artist
    (was included in)
  • 17 Abstract Artists of East Hampton: The Pollock Years, 1946-56
    (was included in)
  • Flying Tigers: Painting and Sculpture in New York, 1939 - 1946
    (was included in)
  • Drawing on the East End, 1940-1988
    (was included in)
  • Esteban Vicente: In the Company of Friends
    (was included in)
  • The Permanent Collection: Drawn in Black and White
    (was included in)
Social Networks
  • Lee Krasner
    (friend)
  • Lee Krasner
    (guest)
  • Jackson Pollock
    (guest)
  • James Brooks
    (friend)
  • Charlotte Park
    (friend)
  • Fairfield Porter
    (friend)
  • Roy Lichtenstein
    (friend)
  • David Smith
    (friend)
  • Leo Castelli
    (neighbor)
  • Frank O'Hara
    (friend)
  • Matta [Roberto Antonio Sebastian Matta Echaurren]
    (friend)
  • Matta [Roberto Antonio Sebastian Matta Echaurren]
    (guest)
  • Raymond Hendler
    (friend)
  • Grace Hartigan
    (friend)
  • Mark Rothko
    (friend)
  • Peter Busa
    (associate)
  • Theodoros Stamos
    (associate)
  • Ian Hornak
    (friend)
  • John Little
    (friend)
  • Esteban Vicente
    (associate)
  • Mary Clyde Abbott
    (is student of)
  • Helen Frankenthaler
    (spouse)
Artists from same movement
  • Dennis Ashbaugh
  • Willem de Kooning
  • Lee Krasner
  • Charlotte Park
  • Kimber Smith
  • Wilfrid Zogbaum
  • Alice Baber
  • John Ferren
  • Ibram Lassaw
  • Betty Parsons
  • Sasson Soffer
  • Larry Zox
  • William Baziotes
  • Perle Fine
  • Alfred Leslie
  • Charles Pollock
  • Syd Solomon
  • James Schuyler
  • Norman Bluhm
  • Helen Frankenthaler
  • Vincent Longo
  • Jackson Pollock
  • Giorgio Spaventa
  • Ruth Kligman
  • Ilya Bolotowsky
  • Joseph Glasco
  • Alvin Loving
  • Richard Pousette-Dart
  • Theodoros Stamos
  • Peggy Guggenheim
  • Ernest Briggs
  • Michael Goldberg
  • Agnes Martin
  • Melville Price
  • Joe Stefanelli
  • Kenneth Koch
  • David Budd
  • Adolph Gottlieb
  • Matta [Roberto Antonio Sebastian Matta Echaurren]
  • Robert Rauschenberg
  • Hedda Sterne
  • Bill Berkson
  • Fritz Bultman
  • John Graham
  • George McNeil
  • Ad Reinhardt
  • Clyfford Still
  • Mary Callery
  • John Button
  • Grace Hartigan
  • Fred Mitchell
  • Milton Resnick
  • Mark Tobey
  • Harriette Joffe
  • Lawrence Calcagno
  • Stanley William Hayter
  • Joan Mitchell
  • Robert Richenburg
  • Bradley Walker Tomlin
  • Mark Di Suervo
  • Nicolas Carone
  • Carol Hunt
  • Kyle Randolph Morris
  • Larry Rivers
  • Stanley Twardowicz
  • Giorgio Cavallon
  • Paul Jenkins
  • Robert Motherwell
  • James Rosati
  • Jack Tworkov
  • John Chamberlain
  • Buffie Johnson
  • Roy W. Nicholson
  • Frank Roth
  • Irving Ramsey Wiles
  • Dan Christensen
  • Lester Johnson
  • Costantino Nivola
  • Mark Rothko
  • Frank Wimberley
  • Christo Coetzee
  • Matsumi Kanemitsu
  • John Opper
  • Miriam Schapiro
  • Manoucher Yektai
  • Mary Clyde Abbott
  • Elaine de Kooning
  • Franz Kline
  • Alfonso Ossorio
  • Sonja Sekula
  • Adja Yunkers
Places
  • East Hampton
    (lived in)
  • East Hampton
    (lived in)
  • Jericho Road
    (lived in, 1950 - 1951)
  • East Hampton
    (visited, 1950 - 1951)
  • East Hampton
    (summered in, 1944)
  • East Hampton
    (lived in, 1945)
  • East Hampton
    (built a home in, 1947)
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