Robert Burns Motherwell (American, 1915-1991) Manner of: Untitled Abstract Composition, signed. Oil on canvas, framed. This painting is possibly a study for one of Motherwell's Elegey to the Spanish Republic series paintings.

Robert Motherwell's Elegies to the Spanish Republic was intended as a "lamentation or funeral song" after the Spanish Civil War. The Elegies consisted of over 100 paintings, completed between 1948 and 1967. Their recurring motif is a rough black oval, repeated in varying sizes and degrees of compression and distortion. Instead of appearing as holes leading into a deeper space, these light-absorbent blots stand out against a ground of relatively even, predominantly white upright rectangles. They have various associations, but Motherwell himself related them to the display of the dead bull's testicles in the Spanish bullfighting ring.


Motherwell described the Elegies paintings as his "private insistence that a terrible death happened that should not be forgot. But," he added, "the pictures are also general metaphors of the contrast between life and death, and their interrelation."

Provenance: Private collection, Romania. Reportedly confiscated by the Russian Government in the 1960's and later restituted to its rightful owners after the breakup of the Soviet Union. This painting was purchased by the collector from one of those owners or their heirs.size: 17.5 x 22.25" Canvas, 19.62 x 24.38" Framed.

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