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The cover of "Motherwell 100 Years" featuring an image of Motherwell painting

Motherwell 100 Years

The cover of Archives of American Art featuring an image of Motherwell writing

Archives of American Art Journal 2017

The cover of the Painter and the Printer featuring a photo of an exhibition wall

The Painter and Printer from Motherwell's studio library

The cover of Robert Motherwell with a detail of an Elegy painting

Cover of Robert Motherwell H.H. Arnason

The cover of Continental March 1984 with a portrait of Robert Motherwell

Continental Magazine March 1984

The cover of Artforum May 1969 with a detail of an Open painting

Art Forum May 1969

Monographs

Arnason, H. H. Robert Motherwell. Notes to the plates by Robert Motherwell. Preface by Bryan Robertson. 1st ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977.

Arnason, H. H. Robert Motherwell. Introduction by Dore Ashton; notes to the plates by Robert Motherwell; interview by Barbaralee Diamonstein. 2nd ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982.

Carmean, E. A., Jr. Reconciliation Elegy. Contributions by Robert Motherwell, Robert Bigelow, and John E. Scofield. Geneva: Editions d’Art Albert Skira; New York: Rizzoli International, 1980.

Caws, Mary Ann. Robert Motherwell: What Art Holds (includes artist’s statements). New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Caws, Mary Ann. Robert Motherwell: With Pen and Brush (includes artist’s statements). London: Reaktion Books, 2003.

Chalumeau, Jean-Luc. Motherwell, 1915–1991 (text in French). Paris: Cercle d’Art, 1998.

Flam, Jack. Motherwell (includes artist’s statements). Oxford: Phaidon, 1991; New York: Rizzoli, 1991; Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 1991. Translated in French as Motherwell. Paris: Albin Michel, 1991.

Flam, Jack, Katy Rogers, and Tim CliffordRobert Motherwell: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1941-1991. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.

Flam, Jack, Katy Rogers, and Tim Clifford. Motherwell: 100 Years. Milan: Skira, 2015.

Mattison, Robert Saltonstall. Robert Motherwell: The Formative Years. Studies in the Fine Arts: The Avant-Garde 56. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1987.

 Mattison, Robert S., John Yau, Robert Hobbs, Donald Kuspit, Mel Gooding, Saul Ostrow, and Matthew Collings. Robert Motherwell: Open (includes artist’s statements). London: 21 Publishing, 2009.

Pleynet, Marcelin. Robert Motherwell. Translated by Mary Ann Caws. Paris: Daniel Papierski, 1989.

Rogers, Katy. Robert Motherwell Drawings: A Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022.

Terenzio, Stephanie, and Dorothy C. Belknap. The Painter and the Printer: Robert Motherwell’s Graphics, 1943–1980 (includes artist’s statements). 1st ed. New York: American Federation of Arts, 1980. Additional editions in 1984 and 1991.

 

Selected Articles and Publications

Arnason, H. H. “On Robert Motherwell and His Early Work.” Art International 10, no. 1 (January 20, 1966): pp. 17–35.

Arnason, H. H. “Robert Motherwell: The Years 1948 to 1965.” Art International 10, no. 4 (April 20, 1966): pp. 19–45.

Arnason, H. H. “Motherwell: The Window and the Wall.” Artnews 68, no. 4 (summer 1969): pp. 48–52, 61–68.

Arnason, H. H. “Robert Motherwell: 1966–1976.” Art International 20, nos. 9–10 (October–November 1976): pp. 9–25, 55–56.

Ashton, Dore. “Robert Motherwell: Passion and Transfiguration” (includes artist’s statements). Studio International 167, no. 851 (March 1964): pp. 100–105.

Ashton, Dore. “Robert Motherwell” (includes artist’s statements). Flash Art, no. 100 (November 1980): pp. 4–8.

Bannon, Anthony. “The Main Event: Thoroughly Modernist Motherwell” (includes artist’s statements). Continental 2, no. 3 (March 1984): cover, pp. 36–39, 99–100.

B[ird], P[aul]. “Motherwell: A Profile” (includes artist’s statement). Art Digest 26, no. 1 (October 1, 1951): pp. 6, 23.

Cao, Yi-Qiang. “Robert Motherwell and Asian Concepts.”  Asian Art News 15 (September 2005): 84-87.

Carmean, E. A., Jr. “Robert Motherwell’s Spanish Elegies” (includes artist’s statements). Arts Magazine 50, no. 10 (June 1976): pp. 94–97.

Caws, Mary Ann. “Robert Motherwell and the Modern Painter’s World.” In Artists, Intellectuals, and World War II: The Pontigny Encounters at Mount Holyoke College, 1942–1944, edited by Christopher Benfey and Karen Remmler, pp. 114–21. Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006.

Collins, Bradford R. “The Fundamental Tragedy of the Elegies to the Spanish Republic, or Robert Motherwell’s Dilemma” (includes artist’s statements). Arts Magazine 59, no. 1 (September 1984): pp. 94–97.

Edgar, Natalie. “The Satisfactions of Robert Motherwell.” Artnews 64, no. 6 (October 1965): pp. 38–41, 65–66.

Fineberg, Jonathan. “Death and Maternal Love: Psychological Speculations on Robert Motherwell’s Art” (includes artist’s statements). Artforum 17, no. 1 (September 1978): pp. 52–57.

Gelles, George. “Motherwell: Call of the Sea and Window of the Soul” (includes artist’s statements). Arts Line 2, no. 2 (June 1984): cover, pp. 10–11, 37–38.

Gilbert, Gregory. “Robert Motherwell’s World War Two Collages: Signifying War as Topical Spectacle in Abstract Expressionist Art.” Oxford Art Journal 27, no. 3 (2004): pp. 311–37.

Glueck, Grace. “The Mastery of Robert Motherwell.” New York Times, December 2, 1984, sec. Magazine, pp. 68–72, 74, 76, 78, 80, 82, 86.

Landau, Ellen G. Mexico and American Modernism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.

Landau, Ellen G. “Robert Motherwell among the Surrealists.” Archives of American Art Journal 56, no. 2 (fall 2017): pp. 4-25.

Kees, Weldon. “Robert Motherwell” (includes artist’s statements). Magazine of Art 41, no. 3 (March 1948): pp. 86–88.

Kelder, Diane. “Motherwell’s ‘A la Pintura.’” Art in America 60, no. 5 (September–October 1972): pp. 100–101.

Krauss, Rosalind. “Robert Motherwell’s New Paintings.” Artforum 7, no. 9 (May 1969): pp. 26–28.

O’Hara, Frank. “The Grand Manner of Motherwell” (includes artist’s statements). Vogue 146, no. 6 (October 1, 1965): pp. 206–9, 263–65.

Mattison, Robert S. “A Voyage: Robert Motherwell’s Earliest Works” (includes artist’s statements). Arts Magazine 59, no. 6 (February 1985): pp. 90–93.

Mattison, Robert S. “The Emperor of China: Symbols of Power and Vulnerability in the Art of Robert Motherwell During the 1940’s” (includes artist’s statements). Art International 25, nos. 9–10 (November–December 1982): pp. 8–14.

Mattison, Robert S. “Two Decades of Graphic Art by Robert Motherwell” (includes artist’s statements). Print Collector’s Newsletter 11, no. 6 (January–February 1981): pp. 197–201.

Robertson, Bryan. “From a Notebook on Robert Motherwell.” Studio International 171, no. 875 (March 1966): pp. 89–93.

Rogers, Katy. “The Lives of the Artist: Interviewing Motherwell.” Archives of American Art Journal 56, no. 2 (fall 2017): pp. 50-59.

Rogers, Katy. “To Transform the World: Matta and Motherwell in New York and Mexico” in Nexus New York: Latin American Artists in the Modern Metropolis (exhibition catalogue, text in English and Spanish), pp. 182-194, 256-260. New York: El Museo del Barrio & New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009.

Sandler, Irving H. “Robert Motherwell.” Art International 5, no. 5–6 (June–August 1961): pp. 43–44.

Sawin, Martica. Surrealism in Exile and the Beginning of the New York School. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995.

Wilkin, Karen. “Motherwell’s Magical Collages.” New Criterion 32, no. 4 (December 2013): pp. 30-33.

 

Selected Interviews and Writings by the Artist

Baby, Yvonne. “Robert Motherwell: Order Out of Chaos” (interview with the artist). Guardian (Manchester), July 31, 1977, p. 14. [This is an English translation of an interview (in French) originally published in Le monde]

Baker-Carr, Janet. “A Conversation with Robert Motherwell, Painter” (interview with the artist). Harvard Magazine 78, no. 2 (October 1975): pp. 34–41.

Colsman-Freyberger, Heidi. “Robert Motherwell: Words and Images” (interview with the artist). Print Collector’s Newsletter 4, no. 6 (January–February 1974): pp. 125–29.

Diamonstein, Barbaralee. “Inside New York’s Art World: An Interview with Robert Motherwell” (interview with the artist). Partisan Review 46, no. 3 (1979): pp. 376–90.

Enright, Robert. “The Monumental Diarist: An Interview with Robert Motherwell” (interview with the artist). Border Crossings 8, no. 4 (November 1989): pp. 7–17.

Forman, Deborah. “The Boston Magazine Interview: Robert Motherwell” (interview with the artist). Boston Magazine 72, no. 7 (July 1980): pp. 55–69.

Glenn, Constance W. “Architectural Digest Visits: Mr. and Mrs. Robert Motherwell” (interview with the artist). Architectural Digest 41, no. 1 (January 1984): cover, pp. 84–91.

Hooton, Bruce. “How it All Happened: Motherwell Remembers” (first half of an interview with the artist). Art/World 6, no. 6 (February 22–March 22, 1982): pp. 1, 9.

Hooton, Bruce. “What We Wanted to Do: Motherwell Remembers” (second half of an interview with the artist). Art/World 6, no. 7 (March 22-April 22, 1982): pp. 1, 9.

Kozloff, Max. “An Interview with Robert Motherwell: ‘How I Admire My Colleagues!’” (interview with the artist). Artforum 4, no. 1 (September 1965): pp. 33–37.

Maloon, Terence. “Robert Motherwell” (interview with the artist). Artscribe, no. 11 (April 1978): pp. 16–22.

MacMillan, Duncan. “Robert Motherwell” (interview with the artist). Art Monthly, no. 14 (February 1978): pp. 4–6.

Motherwell, Robert. “Addenda to MoMA Lyric Suite Questionnaire—from Memory . . . with Possible Chronological Slips,” August 8, 1969. Members Newsletter (Museum of Modern Art), no. 6 (fall 1969): pp. 9–10.

Motherwell, Robert. The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell. Edited by Stephanie Terenzio; foreword by Jack Flam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. (A paperback edition, with a foreword by Jack Flam, and an index, was published by the University of California Press in 1999, as part of the Documents of Twentieth-Century Art series).

Motherwell, Robert. The Writings of Robert Motherwell. Edited by Dore Ashton with Joan Banach; introduction by Dore Ashton. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Patton, Phil. “Robert Motherwell: The Mellowing of an Angry Young Man” (interview with the artist). Artnews 81, no. 3 (March 1982): pp. 70–76.

Raynor, Vivien. “A Talk with Robert Motherwell” (interview with the artist). Artnews 73, no. 4 (April 1974): pp. 50–52.

Simon, Sidney. “Concerning the Beginnings of the New York School: 1935–1943; An Interview with Robert Motherwell Conducted by Sidney Simon in New York in January 1967.” Art International 11, no. 6 (summer 1967): pp. 20–23.

Sylvester, David. “‘Painting as Existence’: An Interview with Robert Motherwell” (interview with the artist). Metro, no. 7 (1962): pp. 94–97.