The Abstract Expressionist artist Robert Motherwell was best known as a painter, but he also created a remarkable body of works on paper. The drawings, prints, and collages in this book show a more intimate side of his visual sensibility; they reveal the very personal "handwriting" of the artist as he responded to the subtleties of paper, both as a medium and a material. Motherwell was in fact a most extraordinary draftsman, as this volume testifies. Reproduced in color and in a generous format are more than a hundred of the artist's finest works on paper.
The book is published to accompany an exhibition at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University— an exhibition that was conceived and developed in discussions with the artist during the final year of his life. For this celebration of Motherwell's creative legacy, David Rosand has gathered a distinguished group of contributors. Together, their essays on different aspects of Motherwell's work create a complex picture of a multifaceted artist.
