Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell met aspiring actress and writer Maria Emilia Ferreira y Moyeros in 1941 and they got married the same year. The couple separated in 1949.

In 1950, he married Betty Little and the couple had two daughters. However, the relationship ended in a divorce.

In 1958, he married painter Helen Frankenthaler, and this relationship lasted till 1971, once again ending in a divorce.

Robert Motherwell was born on 24 January 1915, at Aberdeen, Washington. He was the oldest child of Robert Burns Motherwell II and Margaret Hogan Motherwell. His family shifted to San Francisco, a few years after his birth. As a child, he suffered from asthma and spent most of his school education in California.

Between the years 1932 and 1937, he studied painting at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco along with completing his B.A in philosophy from the Stanford University.

At Stanford University, he was exposed to various ideologies like modernism and concept of symbolism in art, and was influenced deeply by the works of James Joyce, Mallarmé, Edgar Allan Poe and Octavio Paz.

He later went on to do PhD in Philosophy from Harvard University, upon the insistence of his father. In 1940, he shifted to New York to study Art History in Columbia University under the guidance of artist Meyer Schapiro, upon the advice of composer Arthur Berger.

Meyer Schapiro urged Robert Motherwell to pursue art and arranged for his studies under painter Kurt Seligmann. He also got introduced to a group of exiled surrealist painters, and this proved to be extremely helpful for nurturing his art.

During his Mexico tour he made sketches that later became part of his initial major art works, like the ‘Little Spanish Prison’ (1941), ‘Dead and Alive’ (1943) etc.

Robert Motherwell was influenced by Roberto Matta’s style of automatic drawing and this was evident in the initial sketches he made at Mexico. However, during his travel he met painter Wolfgang Paalen, and his association with the painter led to Robert Motherwell altering his style to include ‘Abstract Expressionism’.

After returning to New York in 1942, he befriended well-known artists Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Hans Hofmann and William Baziotes. However, he observed that though American artists could paint exceptionally well, there was no creative principle involved in the art.

In the early years of 1940s, Robert Motherwell was instrumental in beginning the movement of Abstract Expressionism. He was supported by several other artists like Roberto Matta, Pollock, de Kooning, Hofmann, Kamrowski and Busa.

In 1942, he was included in the ‘First Papers of Surrealism’ exhibition held at the Whitelaw Reid Mansion at New York.

Robert Motherwell was known for his style of ‘abstract expressionism’. His most popular works include his art series ‘Open’ and 'Elegy to the Spanish Republic'.