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Lot Essay
Robert Motherwell’s haunting work, Málaga [Málaga (Spanish Elegy Series)], was among the ten Elegies to the Spanish Republic that the artist exhibited at New York’s Kootz Gallery in 1950. These paintings were the first in what would become a series of over one hundred works that are regarded as central to Motherwell’s artistic career and a celebrated signature of Abstract Expressionism. Using the pictorial punctuation that unites the series, whereby black and white rectilinear verticals frame black spheres, Málaga demonstrates the expressive diversity of tone allowed by such a seemingly restrictive visual vocabulary. As Jack Flam has observed, the Elegies provided Motherwell “with a language that, like the notes on the musical scale, was limited but which could produce enormously varied effects” (J. Flam, “Paintings, 1948-1958: Elegies to the Spanish Republic,” Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1941-1991, New Haven, 2012, Vol. 1, p. 75). In contrast to other Elegies, for example, where boldly worked black vertical masses set upon a field of white frequently squeeze ovoidal forms, in this example the loosely worked white planes are as assertively foregrounded as the verticals of black. Within these white rectangular strips the black shapes stand out as isolated, almost sentient forms.
That Málaga expresses a human element is pertinent, for the Elegies were created as a retrospective response to the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Like Picasso’s Guernica (1937), a number of Motherwell’s early Elegies were named after places in Spain affected by the brutality of the conflict. Málaga was the site of a particularly cruel attack by the Nationalist forces of General Francisco Franco. After taking the city from the unprepared Republicans in February 1937, the pro-Franco and fascist troops needlessly pursued those attempting to flee to safety along the coastal road to Almería. Thousands were ultimately massacred. The power of Motherwell’s Elegy paintings is the multiplicity of allusions and interpretations they uphold, from referencing megalithic architecture to representing symbols of male and female sexuality, and beyond. The rectangular planes of Málaga that, again unlike many of the other Elegies, stretch from the top to the bottom of the Masonite panel upon which they are inscribed, and thus provide the illusion of continuance, cannot help but bring to mind the Málaga-Almería road. And yet, at the same time, the painting’s abstracted forms move the work beyond any specific subject denoted by the title to become a universal lament of human suffering and repression. This is emphasized by the reference to internment that the compositional structure evokes.
As an articulate spokesman for the New York School, well educated in art history and philosophy, Motherwell steered away from acknowledging any strictly literal reference in his painting, emphasizing instead a universal approach and a Symbolist correspondence between expressive works. Indeed, the original pictorial source for the Elegy to the Spanish Republic series was an ink drawing Motherwell made to appear alongside a Harold Rosenberg poem, A Bird for Every Bird. When this sketch was reworked as what would become the first of the Elegies paintings, At Five in the Afternoon, Motherwell then drew upon the funereal refrain of a poem by the Spanish writer Federico García Lorca, which commemorates the death of a famous bullfighter. Lorca was himself killed by the fascists during Spain’s civil war. Both Málaga and At Five in the Afternoon were included in the 1950 Kootz Gallery exhibition. While expressed through abstraction, these works are rooted in actuality, as Motherwell made clear: “Making an Elegy is like building a temple, an altar, a ritual place. …Unlike the rest of my work, the Elegies reflect the internationalist in me, interested in the historical forces of the twentieth century, with strong feelings about the conflicting forces in it” (R. Motherwell, quoted in J. Flam, Motherwell, New York, 1991, p. 24). As a haunting meditation on the human condition, Málaga resonates as strongly in the twenty-first century as it did in the last.
That Málaga expresses a human element is pertinent, for the Elegies were created as a retrospective response to the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Like Picasso’s Guernica (1937), a number of Motherwell’s early Elegies were named after places in Spain affected by the brutality of the conflict. Málaga was the site of a particularly cruel attack by the Nationalist forces of General Francisco Franco. After taking the city from the unprepared Republicans in February 1937, the pro-Franco and fascist troops needlessly pursued those attempting to flee to safety along the coastal road to Almería. Thousands were ultimately massacred. The power of Motherwell’s Elegy paintings is the multiplicity of allusions and interpretations they uphold, from referencing megalithic architecture to representing symbols of male and female sexuality, and beyond. The rectangular planes of Málaga that, again unlike many of the other Elegies, stretch from the top to the bottom of the Masonite panel upon which they are inscribed, and thus provide the illusion of continuance, cannot help but bring to mind the Málaga-Almería road. And yet, at the same time, the painting’s abstracted forms move the work beyond any specific subject denoted by the title to become a universal lament of human suffering and repression. This is emphasized by the reference to internment that the compositional structure evokes.
As an articulate spokesman for the New York School, well educated in art history and philosophy, Motherwell steered away from acknowledging any strictly literal reference in his painting, emphasizing instead a universal approach and a Symbolist correspondence between expressive works. Indeed, the original pictorial source for the Elegy to the Spanish Republic series was an ink drawing Motherwell made to appear alongside a Harold Rosenberg poem, A Bird for Every Bird. When this sketch was reworked as what would become the first of the Elegies paintings, At Five in the Afternoon, Motherwell then drew upon the funereal refrain of a poem by the Spanish writer Federico García Lorca, which commemorates the death of a famous bullfighter. Lorca was himself killed by the fascists during Spain’s civil war. Both Málaga and At Five in the Afternoon were included in the 1950 Kootz Gallery exhibition. While expressed through abstraction, these works are rooted in actuality, as Motherwell made clear: “Making an Elegy is like building a temple, an altar, a ritual place. …Unlike the rest of my work, the Elegies reflect the internationalist in me, interested in the historical forces of the twentieth century, with strong feelings about the conflicting forces in it” (R. Motherwell, quoted in J. Flam, Motherwell, New York, 1991, p. 24). As a haunting meditation on the human condition, Málaga resonates as strongly in the twenty-first century as it did in the last.