Robert Motherwell: Works on Paper, 1951 – 1991

Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to announce a comprehensive survey of Robert Motherwell works on paper, exploring four decades of the artist’s career from the 1950s through the 1980s. On view October 30 – January 3, 2015 at 515 West 27th Street, the exhibition is presented in partnership with the Dedalus Foundation. The collages, drawings and paintings on paper represent a thorough study of the materials and processes of one of the most influential artists of the second half of the 20th century.

Chronologically, the exhibition begins with Motherwell’s gestural iconographic studies of asterisks and fowl which affirm the artist’s role as the bridge between European Surrealism and the New York Abstract Expressionists. Later intuitive drawings include a selection of forty works from the acclaimed Lyric Suite of 1965, which were an expression of the artist’s recommitment to automatism. A focal point of the exhibition is Study in Watercolor No. 2 (in Green and Blue), 1968 - a particularly iconic example of the artist’s Beside the Sea series, which mimics the violence of waves crashing on the rocky shore of Provincetown, MA, the artist’s longtime summer home.

At the time of the exhibition the gallery will launch an interactive digital catalogue with audio and video interviews with the artist, numerous archival images and a text from Los Angeles-based critic Andrew Berardini. Also included in the catalogue will be a portfolio of unique works by a selection of important contemporary artists created specifically in response to Motherwell’s works on paper and their legacy, curated by Alex Bacon. In the coming months these collages, drawings, paintings and videos will comprise multiple exhibitions to be held outside of Paul Kasmin Gallery, the first of which will open at Middlemarch in Brussels on October 17th, 2014.