Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), alongside Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning, made up the quartet of American abstract painters who radically defined modern painting and established New York City as the center of the postwar art world.
He was the unofficial spokesman of the New York School, writing, teaching, and lecturing on behalf of the movement, his fellow artists, and the merits of abstraction. Motherwell's aesthetic is instantly recognizable in both paintings and prints for its repeated motifs: monumental black forms, sometimes aggressive, sometimes spontaneous, that seem to confidently devour their pictorial plane.
While it is almost impossible to decipher any trace of figuration in Motherwell's oeuvre, he was inspired by and frequently referenced literature, politics, and art history. One of his most enduring subjects was the Spanish Civil War, which inspired his celebrated Elegy to the Spanish Republic series. Begun in 1948, this extensive body of work became one of the defining achievements of his career, transforming political mourning into a powerful visual language of abstraction.
"Spanish Elegy II" inaugurates Motherwell's use of the Elegy to the Spanish Republic motif in his printmaking practice. Its composition echoes numerous small ink-and-brush drawings he produced in the mid-1970s, translating the immediacy of his gestural approach into print. The stark contrast between the black forms and open ground distills the emotional intensity of the Elegies into a concise graphic statement.
This work is held in the permanent collection of the Tate, London.
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"Spanish Elegy II"
USA, 1975
Lithograph on cream HMP handmade paper
Signed "Motherwell" in pencil lower right
Numbered "27/38" in pencil lower right; workshop chop mark lower right; artist's chop mark lower right; workshop number "RM75-165" reverse lower left
Published by Tyler Graphics Ltd., Bedford Village, New York
Printed by Robert Bigelow, Tyler Graphics Ltd.; Stone preparation, processing, and proofing by Kenneth Tyler
22"H 32"W (sheet)
Note: Some impressions of this print are inscribed "II" and numbered incorrectly as an edition of 45.
Concordance: B144; TGL 389 RM8
Catalogue Raisonné: Listed in the Dedalus online catalogue; CR 175
Very good condition. Note: slight wave in sheet due to the stone litho process on thick handmade paper.
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