Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 460
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{ Title unknown}
Elegy to the Spanish Republic
No. 59
Ca. 1959
Dimensions unknown
inscriptions
Paint on paper (?)
1959
Oil on paperboard
22¼ x 28½ in. (56.5 x 72.4 cm)
present owner
Unknown
inscriptions
Recto, upper left [painted over]: [RM]
provenance
The artist
present owner
Mr. and Mrs. Stanley R. Gumberg,
Pittsburgh
comments
This work is known only from an early
black-and-white photograph (Juley
photo no. 116; j0004908). We do not
know whether this work still exists in
the form illustrated here.
provenance
Private collection; [Sotheby Parke
Bernet, Inc., New York, November 10,
1986, lot 16, illus.]; Mr. and Mrs.
Stanley R. Gumberg, Pittsburgh, 1986
solo exhibitions
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, April
1961, cat. no. 22, illus. n.p.
Museum of Modern Art, New York,
1967 (circulating), Buenos Aires, cat.
no. 3; Caracas, cat. no. 58; Bogotá, cat.
no. 58; Mexico City, cat. no. 3; as Elegía
a la República Española (Elegy to the
Spanish Republic).
448
paintings on p a p e r an d p a p e r b o a r d
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group exhibitions
United States Information Agency,
Washington, D.C., 1961 (circulating),
cat. no. 52; Salzburg, illus. n.p.
references
Claus 1965, illus. p. 8; Hobbs 1975b,
p. 241, illus. n.p. (pl. 26); Carmean
1978, p. 113.
comments
This work was first exhibited at the
Sidney Janis Gallery in April 1961 as
Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 59.
The catalogue for that exhibition
notes that it was painted in Falmouth,
Massachusetts, where Motherwell spent
the summer of 1959.
Both the title and the date of this
work were erroneously listed (as Elegy
to the Spanish Republic #62, dated 1953)
in an unpublished 1967 checklist for a
traveling exhibition of works on paper by
Motherwell organized by the Museum
of Modern Art (Museum of Modern
Art Archives, New York, ice-f-112-67).
Both errors were later repeated in a
1986 Sotheby Parke Bernet auction
catalogue. Motherwell did not assign
the number 62 to any work in his
Elegy series.
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A Spanish Elegy
1958–59
Oil on paperboard
11½ x 14½ in. (29.2 x 36.8 cm)
inscriptions
Recto not signed, not dated
Verso not seen [“signed and dated
Robert Motherwell 1959 on the reverse—
signed again, titled, dedicated and
dated again FOR BECKI AND BERNARD
REIS, 1960 A SPANISH ELEGY Robert
Motherwell 1958 on a label affixed to the
masonite backing—oil on paper with
incision,” per Christie’s 1992]
artist’s studio number
p58-5123
present owner
Unknown
provenance
Mr. and Mrs. Bernard J. Reis, New
York, 1960; [Christie’s, New York,
November 19, 1992, lot 313, illus.];
unknown owner, 1992
