Rives BFK paper; cream Moriki handmade paper

Signed "RM" in pencil lower right

Numbered in pencil lower right; artist's chop mark lower right

49

1 archive proof
11 AP, numbered I/X-X/X; one set unnumbered
1 CP
HC (unrecorded)
2 PP

Artist and Waddington Graphics Ltd., London

Catherine Mosley, assisted by Diana Donaldson, artist’s studio, Greenwich, Connecticut

2 colors (including 1 colored paper) printed in 2 steps from 1 copper plates: 1. black – plate (on Moriki paper); 2. Moriki paper adhered to Rives BFK paper (chine collé)

B 336

The title of this suite comes from T. S. Eliot's poem of 1925. Attracted to Eliot's work early in his life, as part of the formative mythos of his generation, Motherwell returned to it in his last years because he felt it to be a true measure of the culture.

Motherwell often devoted intense periods of time to a series of works on a specific theme. The germinal work for the Hollow Men Suite was a small 1979 pencil drawing on Mylar, which Motherwell incorporated into a 1983 painting as automatic charcoal drawing. Successive variations on this theme made their way into the Hollow Men Suite and the illustrated book Three Poems (cat. no. 387.1-.27).