Art © Dedalus Foundation, Inc. /Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
On view
Cross-Collections Gallery
Untitled,
1957
Robert Motherwell, 1915–1991; born Aberdeen, WA; died Provincetown, MA; active New York, NY, and Greenwich, CT
x1965-75
Combining spontaneous painting with the immediacy of found objects, Motherwell developed a series of collage-paintings that strove to articulate “the experience, feelings, and values of modern men, not as we might exist ideally, but as we exist now.” This work, with its envelope seemingly torn from the artist’s studio and stuck on fiberboard, aims not for an idealized composition but for a confrontation between the fluidity of paint and the physical materials of the artist’s daily life.
Information
Title
Untitled
Dates
1957
Maker
Medium
Paper collage and oil on Masonite
Dimensions
40.2 x 30.2 cm (15 13/16 x 11 7/8 in.)
Credit Line
Anonymous gift
Object Number
x1965-75
Signatures
Signed and dated by scratching, upper right: R. Motherwell 57
Culture
Materials
Techniques
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, NY (label on frame). Donald Morris Gallery, Detroit, MI (label on frame). Gifted anonymously to Princeton University Art Museum, 1965.
- "Acquisitions 1965 and 1966," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 26, no. 1 (1967): p. 2, 19-32., p. 27
- John Wilmerding et al., American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum: volume 1: drawings and watercolors, (Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 178, cat. no. 42; p. 179 (illus.); p. 317, checklist no. 440
