Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 572
w407
w408
w407
Study for Shem the Penman
1972
Acrylic and graphite on paperboard
8¼ x 11 in. (21 x 27.9 cm)
inscriptions
Recto, upper left: RM 72
comments
The title of this work refers to Shem
the Penman, the archetypal artist character from James Joyce’s Finnegans
Wake; see also the Comments for the
large 1972 painting on canvas Shem the
Penman (p679).
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group exhibitions
Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles,
February 1999, cat. no. 20.
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Untitled
1973
Acrylic on paper
31 x 41¾ in. (78.7 x 106 cm)
artist’s studio number
d72-282
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present owner
Collection of the Modern Art Museum
of Fort Worth. Museum purchase, the
Friends of Art Endowment Fund
1972
Acrylic on paperboard
8¼ x 11 in. (21 x 27.9 cm)
inscriptions
Recto, upper left: R. Motherwell
Feb 73
inscriptions
Recto, lower right: RM 72
artist’s studio number
d73-5603
artist’s studio number
d72-268
present owner
Dedalus Foundation
present owner
Dedalus Foundation
provenance
Dedalus Foundation, 1991
provenance
Dedalus Foundation, 1991
comments
This work is one of a group of paintings
on paper Motherwell executed in early
1973 that were based on variations of
the linear forms developed in his Open
series. A number of these works were
painted on proofs for unpublished
provenance
Dedalus Foundation, 1991; Modern Art
Museum of Fort Worth, 1999
solo exhibitions
Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery,
Columbia University, New York, 1997
(traveling), cat. no. VI.7, color illus.
p. 140 (pl. 69).
{ Untitled (Open Ochre)}
solo exhibitions
Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles,
1997, cat. no. 36, color illus. n.p.
Marlborough Gallery, New York, 2002.
560
paintings on p a p e r an d p a p e r b o a r d
screen prints that Motherwell had done
in 1970, which contained red or blue
linear forms (see the Comments for
w429). The artist dated many of these
works to February 1973, but some were
left undated.
In the spring of 1973, shortly
after Motherwell executed this series
of paintings on paper, he made his
first prints done in collaboration with
Catherine Mosley at his Greenwich
studio. These prints included variations
of the motifs seen in paintings on paper
such as this one (see, for example,
Engberg and Banach 2003, nos. 134
and 135, and related works). Around
the same time Motherwell also made
a lithograph called Hommage à Picasso:
Window (Engberg and Banach 2003,
no. 141) at Gemini G.E.L. That print
was included in a five-album group of
prints by various artists created to commemorate Picasso after his death on
April 8, 1973.
