Nemesis

Details

ROBERT MOTHERWELL (1915-1991)
Nemesis
signed and dated 'R. Motherwell 1982' (on the reverse)
acrylic on canvas
60 x 43 7⁄8 in. (152.4 x 111.4 cm.)
Painted in 1981-1982.

Provenance

Private collection, New York, acquired directly from the artist, 1984
Anon. sale; Heritage Auctions, New York, 22 May 2017, lot 77027
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Literature

A. Bujese, ed., Twenty-Five Artists, Frederick, Maryland, 1982, p. 86 (illustrated).
J. A. Lewis, "Portraits Of the Artists," The Washington Post, 16 December 1982.
R. Stiftel, "Stürmisches Schwarz," Westfälischer Anzeiger, 21 December 2004, p. 298 (illustrated).
J. Flam, K. Rogers and T. Clifford, eds., Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1941-1991, Vol. 2: Paintings on Canvas and Panel, New Haven and London, 2012, p. 504, no. P1039 (illustrated).

Exhibited

Washington, D.C., Phoenix II Gallery, Twenty-Five Artists, December 1982-January 1983.
Leverkusen, Museum Morsbroich, Motherwell, October 2004-January 2005, p. 115 (illustrated).

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

"...I have to say that then I belong...to a family of...earth-color painters in masses... Because Matisse is such a great colorist, don't forget that his greatest color is black. And other artists have this particular painting-mind. ...It's an earthy, broad-minded, unsentimental painting family which, like all families, contains mediocrities, but more rarely than, say, the much larger family of representational, fool-the-eye painters. ...a painter who uses dark tones...is something very different from thinking of black as a black color—in the sense that one thinks of fire-engine red as red, not as a tone..."
—Robert Motherwell

Nemesis

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