Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 251
c503
comments
This work, an alternate maquette for
the 1975 lithograph Bastos (Engberg
and Banach 2003, no. 169), was started
shortly after the first large Bastos collage (c501) and finished at the beginning of 1975. In this collage, Motherwell
once again uses a greatly enlarged
reproduction of the cigarette package,
but the version used in this work is
slightly different from those used in
c501 and in the print edition.
Dublin Collage
solo exhibitions
Knoedler & Company, New York, 1976,
cat. no. 8 (shown in early state).
1975/ca. 1983
Acrylic and pasted paper on canvas
mounted on Masonite
72 x 36 in. (182.9 x 91.4 cm)
Provincetown Art Association and
Museum, Mass., 1983 (traveling)
(shown in early state).
inscriptions
Recto, upper left: RM 75
Galerie Bernd Klüser, Munich, 2001,
cat. no. 43, color illus. p. 65.
artist’s studio number
c75-2213; c75-2668
group exhibitions
Fine Arts Center Gallery, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, 1976, illus.
p. 8; shown in early state.
c503
present owner
Private collection, United Kingdom
provenance
Dedalus Foundation, 1991; Jonathan
Novak Contemporary Art, 2001;
Waddington Galleries, London, 2002;
private collection, United Kingdom,
2008
Knoedler & Company, New York, 1977,
cat. no. 16 (in early state).
Waddington Galleries, London, 2009.
references
Arnason 1977b, illus. p. 84 (pl. 51, in
early state); Advocate Summer Guide
1983b, p. 3; Forman 1983, p. 13; Digby
and Digby 1985, illus. p. 177 (fig. 80, in
early state).
comments
Motherwell set the composition for this
work in 1975, using as the collage element a lithographic enlargement of the
packaging for a bar of McClinton’s
Barilla Soap, made in Dublin. (This is
thought to be the same brand of soap
that Leopold Bloom famously buys at
Sweny’s chemists in Dublin, in Joyce’s
Ulysses, and carries in his pocket
throughout the day, whence the title of
this collage.) Motherwell added the
blue paint sometime after August 1983,
when the work was returned to him
following its exhibition in Provincetown
that summer.
co lla ges
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