Drawing

Recto, upper right [painted over]: [RM] 58
Recto, upper right: RM
Recto, lower center: RM
Verso: not signed, not dated

Dedalus Foundation (in torn form)

The artist

In the 2012 Catalogue Raisonné this work was illustrated by an early black-and-white photograph and said to have been destroyed. But shortly after the publication of the Catalogue Raisonné, the work was discovered amid a large cache of Motherwell’s collage materials (torn papers and prints, painted papers, labels, envelopes, etc.), which had been stored in a warehouse by the Dedalus Foundation several years earlier.
Although Motherwell exhibited this painting on paper and had it photographed as a finished work, at an unknown date he tore it into four pieces. It is illustrated here with the four pieces reassembled. The four separate fragments are now considered to be a part of the Dedalus Foundation Archives.