Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 27
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with its haunting images of the swan.
In the “Preliminary Notice” to
Marcel Raymond’s From Baudelaire to
Surrealism (1949), Motherwell describes
a space that is remarkably evocative
of this collage, and concludes his text
with the following words: “But the
desert air is white. Mallarmé’s Swan”
(reprinted in Motherwell 2007, p. 74).
That edition of the Raymond book also
includes a full-page illustration of an
etching of a swan done by Matisse for
his illustrated book of Mallarmé’s
poetry. The reference to Matisse may
have another dimension: the overall
structure of Mallarmé’s Swan, and the
contrast within it between broad geometrical forms and more condensed
curvilinear ones, recall Matisse’s Piano
Lesson of 1916 (Museum of Modern
Art, New York).
The Painter
solo exhibitions
Art of This Century, New York,
October 1944, cat. no. 12.
Alternative Title: Collage
1944
Oil, pasted papers, and crayon on
canvas board
24 x 20⅞ in. (61 x 53 cm)
group exhibitions
67 Gallery, New York, 1944, cat. no. 25,
as Collage.
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inscriptions
Recto, upper right: Motherwell 1944
present owner
Wichita Art Museum, Kans. Gift of
the Wichita Art Museum Members
Foundation and the National
Endowment for the Arts
provenance
Jon Stroup, 1944; [Sotheby Parke
Bernet, Inc., New York, January 27,
1966, lot 26, illus.]; Harold Reed
Gallery, 1966; Wichita Art Museum,
Kans., 1969
comments
Among the papers used in this collage
is a fragment from the same military
training map used in Joy of Living (c3)
and View from a High Tower (c17). This
work was sold at Sotheby Parke Bernet
in 1967 as Composition with Yellow
Square, but that was only a descriptive
title, not Motherwell’s.
This collage is almost certainly
the work shown as The Painter in
Motherwell’s first solo exhibition at Art
of This Century in October 1944. Like
the other five collages in that show, it
appears to have been sold directly by
the gallery at the time of the exhibition,
in this case to the artist Jon Stroup, who
reviewed the show for Art Digest; the
sale of a collage to Stroup is recorded
in the gallery sales ledgers (Bernard J.
Reis Papers, 1934–79, Archives of
American Art).
The composition of this collage
clearly evokes a figure similar to the
depiction of the artist in Picasso’s Studio
paintings of the late 1920s. In fact, it
has strong affinities with Picasso’s Studio
of 1928 (see fig. 11 in volume 1), which
Motherwell said was his favorite of all
the works Peggy Guggenheim owned:
“[Mondrian’s] work gave me the sense
that painting could be wholly expressive
without ‘literature’ or expressionism,
but my favorite picture in the whole
Guggenheim collection was the white
Picasso which she told me Max Ernst
persuaded her to buy” (interview with
Bryan Robertson, 1965; see “Writings by
the Artist,” in the Bibliography).
co lla ges
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