Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 419
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comments
This work may have been exhibited
as Coca Cola Sun in Long Beach,
California, in October 1952. The
phrase “Coca-Cola sun” was part of
Motherwell’s vocabulary as early as
the summer of 1942, when he wrote to
his friend, the composer Livingston
Gearhart, about Provincetown: “The
townspeople seem ‘real’ and I do not,
as though I were only an actor, who
had wandered into the dusty Coca-cola
sun of Main Street, and who, in leaving
the stage, had left his reality” (in a letter dated June 9, 1942; see “Writings
by the Artist,” in the Bibliography).
When Motherwell’s first wife, Maria,
was shown an image of this painting in
2004, she noted the presence of what
she called “Coca-Cola blue,” which she
related to Coca-Cola advertisements in
Mexico during the 1940s.
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Clown
Arizona
1946
Oil and gouache on paperboard
19 x 8½ in. (48.3 x 21.6 cm)
1947
Oil on cardboard
11½ x 11½ in. (29.2 x 29.2 cm)
inscriptions
Recto not signed, not dated
inscriptions
Recto, lower right, incised: RM 47
present owner
Collection of Shelby and Frances
Curlee
artist’s studio number
p47-5151
provenance
Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, 1946; Lucille
Curlee Gostomski, ca. 1950; Shelby
and Frances Curlee, 1984
group exhibitions
Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, New York,
March 1946.
Beyond Painting and corresponding with
Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, who were
building a home together in Sedona,
Arizona.
This composition refers to the
imagery of Hopi Kachina dolls.
Motherwell had acquired a Kachina
from Max Ernst around this time; it is
visible in fig. 194 in volume 1.
present owner
Collection of Drs. Gloria and Ben
Engel
provenance
Private collection; Stevens Gallery,
Beverly Hills, Calif.; Gloria and Ben
Engel, 1988
references
Arnason 1982, color illus. p. 108
(pl. 118a); Mattison 1985b, illus. n.p.
(fig. 171, as Untitled [Arizona]); Pleynet
1989b, color illus. p. 74; Caws 2003,
color illus. p. 8 (ill. 2).
comments
At the time he painted this work,
Motherwell was editing Max Ernst’s
p a i n tin gs on paper and paperbo ard
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