Blueness of Blue
1974
Acrylic and charcoal on canvas
72 x 84”

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.