Untitled
1960
Gouache on paper mounted on canvas
35 × 49 in

Country Life No 1
1967
Acrylic and pasted papers on paper
30 × 22 in

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) was born in Aberdeen, Washington, and died in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He was an American painter, printmaker and editor. He was one of the youngest of the New York School (a phrase he coined), which also included Philip Guston, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. He was a major figure in the Abstract Expressionist art movement, well known for both his gestural “Elegies” series, which employed a limited palate and bold shapes, and his “Open” series of fragmentary rectangles, pioneering examples of conceptual abstraction.