Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 611
w541
w541
The Black Sun II
1979
Oil on paper
29 x 23 in. (73.7 x 58.4 cm)
inscriptions
Recto, lower left: Motherwell 79
artist’s studio number
p79-2251
present owner
Collection Bill and Anne Gregory,
Annandale Galleries, Sydney
provenance
Dedalus Foundation, 1991; Bill and
Anne Gregory, Annandale Galleries,
Sydney, Australia, 2005
solo exhibitions
Janie C. Lee Gallery, Houston, 1979,
cat. no. 113, illus. n.p.
Knoedler & Company, New York,
February 1981, cat. no. 15.
Marlborough Gallery, New York, 1999,
cat. no. 30, color illus. p. 23.
Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles,
2000, cat. no. 12.
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London,
2003, cat. no. 3.
Annandale Galleries, Sydney, Australia,
2005.
group exhibitions
Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern, Germany,
1997, color illus. p. 66.
composition The Black Sun (w101). In
1979 he produced a large number of
gestural black paintings on paper that
employed a similar effect, perhaps instigated and inspired in part by that earlier work. The majority of these works
came to be known as the Drunk with
Turpentine series (see the Comments
for w542).
In 1984 Motherwell created a print
loosely modeled on The Black Sun II
that he titled Blackened Sun (Engberg
and Banach 2003, no. 343).
references
Tennant 1979, illus. p. 14.
comments
The way the oil has bled into the paper
surrounding the black paint in this
work recalls Motherwell’s 1959
p a i n tin gs on paper and paperbo ard
599
