Newport Opera 1979 HS

Year1979

Hand SignedSigned Bottom Right: to Newport Rm 

Condition Excellent 

Framed with PlexiglassBlack Frame w/ White Mat 

Purchased fromAuction House 2019 

Provenance / HistoryLiterature: Engberg / Banach Robert Motherwell Print Catalogue Raisonne # 243. Published by the Newport Opera Festival, Newport, Rhode Island, printed by Princeton Polychrome Inc., Princeton, New Jersey, with full margins, framed. 

Story / Additional InfoProduced to benefit the Newport Opera Festival, this print celebrates Motherwell's love of the sea and of sailing. It features simple sleek abstract forms resembling sails and is an excellent example of Robert Motherwell's signature color Motherwell Blue (the same shade found on the Gauloises cigarette packs that so often found their way into his collage work). The deluxe edition consists of 200 unnumbered impressions, of which approximately 50 were signed in red or black pen. This print is one of the 50 that is hand-signed. It is conservation framed with plexi and museum quality 8 ply acid free mat board. The print is boldly hand-signed "to Newport" in the bottom right-hand corner in black ink. It is very legible (see scan). The image is fresh and bright. It is also signed in the plate in black in the upper right hand corner "RM July 1977" (see scan). 

Certificate of AuthenticityArt Brokerage 

Additional InformationSigned Twice - plate signed and hand signed - Motivated 

LID6910

Robert Motherwell - United States

Robert Motherwell was an American artist and seminal Abstract Expressionist painter. Influenced by automatic writing and drawing prescribed by the Surrealists, Motherwell’s practice was characterized by an intuitive approach to painting. He is perhaps best known for his iconic Elegy to the Spanish Republic series, which consists of 150 variants of black forms on white backgrounds. “Painting is a medium in which the mind can actualize itself; it is a medium of thought,” he once reflected. “Thus painting, like music, tends to become its own content.” Born on January 24, 1915 in Aberdeen, WA, he moved to New York to study at Columbia University with the art historian Meyer Schapiro. It was notably Schapiro that initially encouraged Motherwell to start making paintings. During the early 1940s, he entered a milieu of young artists that included William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning. Motherwell later taught Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg at the famed Black Mountain College. Returning to New York, he met the painter Helen Frankenthaler in 1957, whom he married three years later. During their 13 year marriage, the two artists’ mutual interest in the poetry of abstraction fueled one another’s work. The artist died on July 16, 1991 in Cape Cod, MA. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Tate Modern in London, among others. Listings wanted. Check out our new sister site Bluechipartbrokerage.com