.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
"…Making an Elegy is like building a temple, an altar, a ritual place…" - Robert Motherwell
With its bold, dynamic forms, Robert Motherwell’s Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 160 belongs to one of the most compelling series in postwar art. Constituting a meditation on life and death, this large-scale canvas displays the artist’s mature mastery over black and white, orchestrating the two colors into silent, rhythmic, and contemplative configurations which achieve a sublime serenity. Held in the same private collection for nearly fifty years, the work is a prime example from the artist’s Elegies series, his magnum opus and one of the most significant accomplishments of Abstract Expressionism. The respected art historian H.H. Arnason once proclaimed that “many of the Elegies are among the most important paintings of the twentieth century” (H.H. Arnason, “Robert Motherwell,” in Robert Motherwell, Second Edition, New and Revised, ed. E. Grand, New York, 1982, p. 28), and their impact on the trajectory of art history was both immediate and long-lasting.
Across the span of a quarter century, Motherwell relentlessly pursued his elegiac theme across many variations, rigidly interpreting and reinterpreting the emotional power of his monochromatic palette. The work becomes a poem in space, functioning both independently and as a part of a larger epic verse. Striking at the very heart of Motherwell’s lifelong effort to infuse his abstracted works with meaning, knitting it into the very fabric of his canvas and dispersing it across his composition, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 160 is both deeply political and profoundly personal. It operates as an oblique metaphor evoking, yet not describing, Spain after the civil war while at the same time capturing more broadly the contrast and interrelation between life and death.
In addition to its own inherent qualities, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 160 also bridges the gap between two of the greatest movements in twentieth-century art: Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. Its implicit allusion to politics, literature, and poetry recall René Magritte and Joan Miró while its gestural energy and evocative brushstrokes demonstrates why Motherwell was a leader of American abstraction. Even though he was the youngest member of the group, his sophistication and eloquence led to him being the spokesman for the Abstract Expressionists, personally coining the term “New York School” and articulating the movement’s ambitions to the broader public. Instantly recognizable and a cornerstone of many museums’ twentieth-century galleries, the Elegies, much like other significant abstract series like Rothko’s color field series or Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, are amongst the most important contribution to 20th Century Art. The Elegies occupy the same revered pantheon as Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, which similarly decries the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, Motherwell expanding the motifs instigated by the Spanish master.
Compositionally, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 160 oscillates between rectangular and ovular forms painted in a vivid black against an equally textured white ground. The interplay between these forms establishes a palpable tension between the tectonic and the organic, establishing a highly dynamic tableau which achieves structural stability while encouraging a narrative impulse. The powerful verticality of the rightmost black rectangle establishes a permanence which juxtapose against the more liminal ephemerality of the ovoid forms. The rightmost ovoid appears to be either dissipating or synthesizing, pressed as it is between the outer bounds of the canvas and the dominance of the black column. The central two ovoids are more consolidated, controlled by the columnal forms yet solidly stabilized against their weight, with the leftward column bending, giving way to the organic energy emitting outward by the circular forms.
This dual vocabulary of contrasting forms proceeding frieze-like across the canvas embodies and refines the consistent syntax and intensity of the Elegies series’ highly charged iconography. The sense of intense repetition also conveys what Motherwell describes as a “trait of nerves, a running the gauntlet” which the artist felt evoked a particularly Spanish sentimentality (ibid., p.108). The pair of horizontal black lines—a rarity for the series—partially encapsulate the forms within a central register, heightening the sense in which the work occupies the frieze and recalling the frenzied energy of the Parthenon’s metopes.
"I know who had sent them in those green cases.
Who doesn't lose his mind will receive like me that wire in my neck up to the ear."
- Harold Rosenberg, "The Bird for Every Bird" (1948)
Deeply inspired by the French Symbolist poetry he had read whilst studying philosophy at Stanford then Harvard, Motherwell stated that “Modernism as experienced in international twentieth-century poetry” was “one of my major interests” and was concerned with translating the cultural and political issues examined by modern poets into a painterly vernacular (R. Motherwell, “Introduction,” in Robert Motherwell, ed. E. Grand, ibid., p. 7). Two poems in particular played crucial roles in the genesis of the Elegies series. Motherwell made the original composition for the second issue of Possibilities magazine, a short-lived art and literary magazine he co-edited with critic Harold Rosenberg, architect Pierre Chardeau, and composer John Cage. Illustrating a poem written by Rosenberg, the retrospectively titled Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 1 (Museum of Modern Art, New York) features for the first time the formal structure and motifs which would become emblematic of the series. Motherwell insisted that this drawing “had literally nothing to do with the poem—except for them both having a brutal quality—certainly not its images” (quoted in D. Rosand, “‘My I’: Toward an Iconography of Self,” in Robert Motherwell on Paper: Drawings, Prints, Collages, exh. cat., Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, 1997, p. 20). However, the second issue of Possibilities was never published, and the drawing languished in the artist’s studio for over a year before its rediscovery ignited Motherwell’s most creative and significant series.
The second instance is At Five in the Afternoon (1950, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), which explicitly refers to Spanish Symbolist poet Federico García Lorca’s poem “Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías,” the work’s title quoting the poem’s refrain, repeated thirty-five times in Lorca’s fifty-one lines. Lorca’s lament for a felled matador, written one year before his assassination by a Nationalist militia, is simultaneously a broader statement mourning the collapse of the Spanish Republic and the rise of Fascism, as well as a general contemplation on death. Motherwell describes how by appropriating Lorca’s line, he was dedicating his series “consecrated to a Spanish sense of death which I got most from Lorca, but from other sources as well—my Mexican wife, bullfights, travel in Mexico…” (quoted in op. cit., p. 20). The present work more explicitly turns to Spanish notions of struggle and death with the inclusion of a small passage of red above the central right ovoid. A rare inclusion only seen in some of his later works like Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 172 (with Blood) (Denver Art Museum), red stands in for blood, explicitly turning back to the Spanish bullfight and the matador’s heroic confrontation with death.
After completing At Five in the Afternoon, Motherwell discovered that the image he painted was “like a temple,” thus realizing that his Elegies would become a consecrated temple “to a Spanish sense of death” (quoted in J. Flam et al., Motherwell: 100 Years, Milan, 2015, p. 107). The artist later stated that “making an Elegy is like building a temple, an altar, a ritual place,” emphasizing the construction of each tableau as a ritualized meditation by Motherwell on the themes considered in his works (quoted in op. cit., p. 120). The art historian H.H. Arnason expands this description of the Elegies as a temple-like form, writing that the visual associations made by both artist and spectator were “black as the symbol of death" and “white as the symbol of life,” while identifying the monoliths as resembling the architecture of a mausoleum and the ovals as living forms (H.H. Arnason, “Robert Motherwell,” op. cit., p. 30).
As noted by H.H. Arnason, the enduring combat between the black and white colors across the Elegies writ large occupies one of the most significant themes in the series. Motherwell was deeply preoccupied with the symbolic and physical connotations of each color, and each Elegy contains a balanced amount of white and black space, establishing a unity between the two colors and their deeper representations. Writing a preface for the 1950 exhibition Black Or White: Paintings by European and American Artists held at Kootz Gallery in New York, Motherwell reflects on the power of these two colors, noting that “if the amounts of black or white are right, they will have condensed into quality, into feeling” (R. Motherwell, “Black or White,” in The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell, ed. S. Terenzio, New York, 1992, p. 71).
With its bold, dynamic forms, Robert Motherwell’s Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 160 belongs to one of the most compelling series in postwar art. Constituting a meditation on life and death, this large-scale canvas displays the artist’s mature mastery over black and white, orchestrating the two colors into silent, rhythmic, and contemplative configurations which achieve a sublime serenity. Held in the same private collection for nearly fifty years, the work is a prime example from the artist’s Elegies series, his magnum opus and one of the most significant accomplishments of Abstract Expressionism. The respected art historian H.H. Arnason once proclaimed that “many of the Elegies are among the most important paintings of the twentieth century” (H.H. Arnason, “Robert Motherwell,” in Robert Motherwell, Second Edition, New and Revised, ed. E. Grand, New York, 1982, p. 28), and their impact on the trajectory of art history was both immediate and long-lasting.
Across the span of a quarter century, Motherwell relentlessly pursued his elegiac theme across many variations, rigidly interpreting and reinterpreting the emotional power of his monochromatic palette. The work becomes a poem in space, functioning both independently and as a part of a larger epic verse. Striking at the very heart of Motherwell’s lifelong effort to infuse his abstracted works with meaning, knitting it into the very fabric of his canvas and dispersing it across his composition, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 160 is both deeply political and profoundly personal. It operates as an oblique metaphor evoking, yet not describing, Spain after the civil war while at the same time capturing more broadly the contrast and interrelation between life and death.
In addition to its own inherent qualities, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 160 also bridges the gap between two of the greatest movements in twentieth-century art: Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. Its implicit allusion to politics, literature, and poetry recall René Magritte and Joan Miró while its gestural energy and evocative brushstrokes demonstrates why Motherwell was a leader of American abstraction. Even though he was the youngest member of the group, his sophistication and eloquence led to him being the spokesman for the Abstract Expressionists, personally coining the term “New York School” and articulating the movement’s ambitions to the broader public. Instantly recognizable and a cornerstone of many museums’ twentieth-century galleries, the Elegies, much like other significant abstract series like Rothko’s color field series or Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, are amongst the most important contribution to 20th Century Art. The Elegies occupy the same revered pantheon as Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, which similarly decries the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, Motherwell expanding the motifs instigated by the Spanish master.
Compositionally, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 160 oscillates between rectangular and ovular forms painted in a vivid black against an equally textured white ground. The interplay between these forms establishes a palpable tension between the tectonic and the organic, establishing a highly dynamic tableau which achieves structural stability while encouraging a narrative impulse. The powerful verticality of the rightmost black rectangle establishes a permanence which juxtapose against the more liminal ephemerality of the ovoid forms. The rightmost ovoid appears to be either dissipating or synthesizing, pressed as it is between the outer bounds of the canvas and the dominance of the black column. The central two ovoids are more consolidated, controlled by the columnal forms yet solidly stabilized against their weight, with the leftward column bending, giving way to the organic energy emitting outward by the circular forms.
This dual vocabulary of contrasting forms proceeding frieze-like across the canvas embodies and refines the consistent syntax and intensity of the Elegies series’ highly charged iconography. The sense of intense repetition also conveys what Motherwell describes as a “trait of nerves, a running the gauntlet” which the artist felt evoked a particularly Spanish sentimentality (ibid., p.108). The pair of horizontal black lines—a rarity for the series—partially encapsulate the forms within a central register, heightening the sense in which the work occupies the frieze and recalling the frenzied energy of the Parthenon’s metopes.
"I know who had sent them in those green cases.
Who doesn't lose his mind will receive like me that wire in my neck up to the ear."
- Harold Rosenberg, "The Bird for Every Bird" (1948)
Deeply inspired by the French Symbolist poetry he had read whilst studying philosophy at Stanford then Harvard, Motherwell stated that “Modernism as experienced in international twentieth-century poetry” was “one of my major interests” and was concerned with translating the cultural and political issues examined by modern poets into a painterly vernacular (R. Motherwell, “Introduction,” in Robert Motherwell, ed. E. Grand, ibid., p. 7). Two poems in particular played crucial roles in the genesis of the Elegies series. Motherwell made the original composition for the second issue of Possibilities magazine, a short-lived art and literary magazine he co-edited with critic Harold Rosenberg, architect Pierre Chardeau, and composer John Cage. Illustrating a poem written by Rosenberg, the retrospectively titled Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 1 (Museum of Modern Art, New York) features for the first time the formal structure and motifs which would become emblematic of the series. Motherwell insisted that this drawing “had literally nothing to do with the poem—except for them both having a brutal quality—certainly not its images” (quoted in D. Rosand, “‘My I’: Toward an Iconography of Self,” in Robert Motherwell on Paper: Drawings, Prints, Collages, exh. cat., Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, 1997, p. 20). However, the second issue of Possibilities was never published, and the drawing languished in the artist’s studio for over a year before its rediscovery ignited Motherwell’s most creative and significant series.
The second instance is At Five in the Afternoon (1950, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), which explicitly refers to Spanish Symbolist poet Federico García Lorca’s poem “Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías,” the work’s title quoting the poem’s refrain, repeated thirty-five times in Lorca’s fifty-one lines. Lorca’s lament for a felled matador, written one year before his assassination by a Nationalist militia, is simultaneously a broader statement mourning the collapse of the Spanish Republic and the rise of Fascism, as well as a general contemplation on death. Motherwell describes how by appropriating Lorca’s line, he was dedicating his series “consecrated to a Spanish sense of death which I got most from Lorca, but from other sources as well—my Mexican wife, bullfights, travel in Mexico…” (quoted in op. cit., p. 20). The present work more explicitly turns to Spanish notions of struggle and death with the inclusion of a small passage of red above the central right ovoid. A rare inclusion only seen in some of his later works like Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 172 (with Blood) (Denver Art Museum), red stands in for blood, explicitly turning back to the Spanish bullfight and the matador’s heroic confrontation with death.
After completing At Five in the Afternoon, Motherwell discovered that the image he painted was “like a temple,” thus realizing that his Elegies would become a consecrated temple “to a Spanish sense of death” (quoted in J. Flam et al., Motherwell: 100 Years, Milan, 2015, p. 107). The artist later stated that “making an Elegy is like building a temple, an altar, a ritual place,” emphasizing the construction of each tableau as a ritualized meditation by Motherwell on the themes considered in his works (quoted in op. cit., p. 120). The art historian H.H. Arnason expands this description of the Elegies as a temple-like form, writing that the visual associations made by both artist and spectator were “black as the symbol of death" and “white as the symbol of life,” while identifying the monoliths as resembling the architecture of a mausoleum and the ovals as living forms (H.H. Arnason, “Robert Motherwell,” op. cit., p. 30).
As noted by H.H. Arnason, the enduring combat between the black and white colors across the Elegies writ large occupies one of the most significant themes in the series. Motherwell was deeply preoccupied with the symbolic and physical connotations of each color, and each Elegy contains a balanced amount of white and black space, establishing a unity between the two colors and their deeper representations. Writing a preface for the 1950 exhibition Black Or White: Paintings by European and American Artists held at Kootz Gallery in New York, Motherwell reflects on the power of these two colors, noting that “if the amounts of black or white are right, they will have condensed into quality, into feeling” (R. Motherwell, “Black or White,” in The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell, ed. S. Terenzio, New York, 1992, p. 71).