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Lot Essay
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of paintings and collages being prepared by the Dedalus Foundation.
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas.
-T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925
The Grand Inquisitor is a heroic scale painting by Robert Motherwell, from one of his last great bodies of work, known as the Hollow Men series. The title of the series is taken from the eponymous poem by T. S. Eliot.
The series are in a sense part of, and also an extension of, the Spanish Elegy series for which the artist is best known. "In The Hollow Men and its progeny, graphic as well as painted, Motherwell had discovered new life in his own "inherited iconography"; an "existing subject" had given him the "joy" of new discovery (D. Rosand, quoted in Robert Motherwell on Paper, 1997, New York, p. 23).
"The Hollow Men of 1983 has the shape of an Elegy, with its ochre ovals, thick and linked under a black sky. Those elegies for all of us, and not just for the Spanish Republic, those paintings that reach past their original gesture, find an apt response in the tragedy of hollowness. Like something that is nothing at its core" (M. A. Caws, Robert Motherwell: What Art Holds, New York, 1996, p. 78).
Under a lemon sky, the mountainous forms spread out across the picture plane like an abstracted landscape that is almost Fauvist in its use of raw and unmodulated color. Motherwell has taken the forms and compositional devices of the Elegies, and imbued them with a sense of transparency. Jaunty charcoal lines dance within the brown forms, articulating outlines at times, and creating an internal web that unifies them. Within the overarching "mountain", Motherwell has created a complex composition, with the forms and horizontal stripes of the background projecting and receding within.
A dramatic and poignant example of a noteworthy series, The Grand Inquisitor shows an artist breaking new aesthetic ground, while creating a meaningful visual response to a moving literary work. As ambitious in intent as it is in scale, The Grand Inquisitor shows the artist at his best.
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas.
-T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925
The Grand Inquisitor is a heroic scale painting by Robert Motherwell, from one of his last great bodies of work, known as the Hollow Men series. The title of the series is taken from the eponymous poem by T. S. Eliot.
The series are in a sense part of, and also an extension of, the Spanish Elegy series for which the artist is best known. "In The Hollow Men and its progeny, graphic as well as painted, Motherwell had discovered new life in his own "inherited iconography"; an "existing subject" had given him the "joy" of new discovery (D. Rosand, quoted in Robert Motherwell on Paper, 1997, New York, p. 23).
"The Hollow Men of 1983 has the shape of an Elegy, with its ochre ovals, thick and linked under a black sky. Those elegies for all of us, and not just for the Spanish Republic, those paintings that reach past their original gesture, find an apt response in the tragedy of hollowness. Like something that is nothing at its core" (M. A. Caws, Robert Motherwell: What Art Holds, New York, 1996, p. 78).
Under a lemon sky, the mountainous forms spread out across the picture plane like an abstracted landscape that is almost Fauvist in its use of raw and unmodulated color. Motherwell has taken the forms and compositional devices of the Elegies, and imbued them with a sense of transparency. Jaunty charcoal lines dance within the brown forms, articulating outlines at times, and creating an internal web that unifies them. Within the overarching "mountain", Motherwell has created a complex composition, with the forms and horizontal stripes of the background projecting and receding within.
A dramatic and poignant example of a noteworthy series, The Grand Inquisitor shows an artist breaking new aesthetic ground, while creating a meaningful visual response to a moving literary work. As ambitious in intent as it is in scale, The Grand Inquisitor shows the artist at his best.