Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 423
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Spanish Prison III
1949
Oil, gouache, and graphite on paper
11½ x 14¾ in. (29.2 x 37.5 cm)
inscriptions
Recto, lower left: RM 49
artist’s studio number
d51-5167; d52-5029
present owner
Private collection
provenance
Private collection, 1952
group exhibitions
Williams College Museum of Art,
Williamstown, Mass., 1993, erroneously
as Untitled (Study for Spanish Elegy).
Mount Holyoke College Art Museum,
South Hadley, Mass., 2003, erroneously
as Untitled (Study for Spanish Elegy).
Elegies”); Hobbs 1975b, pp. 215–16,
illus. n.p. (pl. 16); Seitz 1983, pp. 22–23,
29, 89, 126, illus. n.p. (fig. 180, erroneously as Study for “Spanish Elegies”).
comments
Motherwell’s designation of this
work as Spanish Prison III links it with
two early unnumbered works, The Little
Spanish Prison (p3) and The Spanish
Prison (Window) (p12). This connection
makes explicit the thematic and formal
relationships between those early works
and the Elegy to the Spanish Republic
series. In the introduction to the catalogue of his 1950 solo exhibition at the
Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, Motherwell
wrote that The Spanish Prison (Window)
was “the first of the ‘Spanish Elegies.’ ”
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comments
The leaflike black form at the center of
this composition was a common motif
in Motherwell’s paintings of the early
1950s (see, for example, Black Plant and
Window, p103). It was probably derived
from leaf-shaped forms in Matisse’s
late works.
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Still Life with Yellow and
White
1950
Oil on paperboard
23⅜ x 29¼ in. (59.4 x 74.3 cm)
inscriptions
Recto, upper right, incised: RM 50
artist’s studio number
p50-1457
present owner
Dedalus Foundation
provenance
Dedalus Foundation, 1991
solo exhibitions
Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, New York,
April 1952, cat. no. 7.
references
Guild Hall Museum exh. cat. 1986,
illus. p. 13 (in exhibition).
references
Faison 1952b, p. 392; Samuel M. Kootz
Gallery exh. cat. April 1952, back cover
illus.; Seitz 1955, illus. n.p. (fig. 167,
erroneously as Study for “Spanish
p a i n tin gs on paper and paperbo ard
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