Robert Motherwell (1915-1991)

Painted circa 1945, this striking combination of structure and form is an important early example of Robert Motherwell’s work. The artist once declared that his paintings should have ''immediacy, passion or tenderness; beingness, as such, detachment, sheer presence as a modulation of the flat picture plane, true invention and search, light, an unexpected end, mainly warm earth colors and black and white, a certain stalwartness'' (G. Glueck, “The Mastery of Robert Motherwell,” New York Times, December 2, 1984). Here, in Untitled, the origins of all this vocabulary are present, as the strong vertical forms that would dominate his later work can be seen here in abundance. Compositionally related to two other works of the same period (one of which remains in the collection of the artist’s Dedalus Foundation), Untitled is a precursor of the body of work that was to come for the artist.