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 Clifford. Robert 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.