Robert Motherwell - New Now New York Wednesday, September 30, 2020 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    M. Knoedler & Co., New York
    Private Collection, Cologne
    Leslie Sacks Fine Art, Los Angeles
    Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2009

  • Exhibited

    Los Angeles, Leslie Sacks Fine Art, New Acquisitions: The Moderns, September 6 - October 6, 2008 (as Untitled (Holy Ghost))

  • Literature

    Gabriella Drudi, Robert Motherwell Collages, Milan, 1983, n.p. (illustrated)
    Jack Flam, Katy Rogers and Tim Clifford, eds., Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1941-1991, Volume 3, Collages and Paintings on Paper and Paperboard, New Haven, 2012, no. C627, p. 294 (illustrated)

  • Artist Biography

    Robert Motherwell

    American • 1915 - 1991

    One of the youngest proponents of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Robert Motherwell rose to critical acclaim with his first solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery in 1944. Not only was Motherwell one of the major practicing Abstract Expressionist artists, he was, in fact, the main intellectual driving force within the movement—corralling fellow New York painters such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hoffman and William Baziotes into his circle. Motherwell later coined the term the "New York School", a designation synonymous to Abstract Expressionism that loosely refers to a wide variety of non-objective work produced in New York between 1940 and 1960.

    During an over five-decade-long career, Motherwell created a large and powerful body of varied work that includes paintings, drawings, prints and collages. Motherwell's work is most generally characterized by simple shapes, broad color contrasts and a dynamic interplay between restrained and gestural brushstrokes. Above all, it demonstrates his approach to art-making as a response to the complexity of lived, and importantly felt, experience.

    View More Works

67

Heiliger Geist

signed with the artist's initials and dated "RM 75" upper left
acrylic on canvas and paper collage on canvasboard
36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm)
Executed in 1975.

Estimate
$140,000 - 180,000 

Contact Specialist

Sam Mansour
Associate Specialist, Head of New Now Sale
New York
+1 212 940 1219

New Now

New York Auction 30 September 2020