The Beauty of Black and White with Rottet Collection @ Loretta Howard Gallery, New York

The Beauty of Black and White 

with Rottet Collection

Loretta Howard Gallery, New York

June 1 – August 31, 2023

The Beauty of Black and White, is a collaboration with Rottet Studio and Loretta Howard Gallery. This salon-style exhibition presents art and furniture on view in Rottet Studio’s new showroom located at 29 West 30th Street.

Showcasing a passion for art and design in graphic black and white, Lauren Rottet has selected  art works from the Loretta Howard Gallery installed with her original furniture line. The hanging includes paintings, prints and sculpture by Al Held, Joseph Albers, Larry Poons, George Sugarman, Nicolas Carone and Robert Motherwell. The installation also features work from artist and weaver Suzanne Tick.

Lauren Rottet is Founding Principal of Rottet Studio, an international architecture and interior design firm recognized as one of the Top 3 Most Admired Design Firms in the World. Lauren Rottet is the first woman to hold the title of both FAIA and FIIDA. She was also awarded Interior Design Hall of Fame, Interiors Designer of the Year, Boutique Design’s Designer of the Year and Hospitality Design Platinum Circle inductee. She launched the Rottet Collection Furniture Line in 2017.

Loretta Howard was a longtime Director of the Andre Emmerich Gallery before establishing her own gallery. The gallery specializes in classic Post War American art with an emphasis on artists who came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Gallery artists are associated with major movements of the period including Abstract Expressionism, Op Art, Minimalism and Color Field.

Textile designer Suzanne Tick’s work revolves around sustainable and found materials while reinventing manufacturing methods. Her work includes weavings that have been exhibited at MoMA, The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Arts and Design, and with private and corporate clients. Tick was the former Creative Director of Knoll and is the founder of Suzanne Tick Inc.

LORETTA HOWARD GALLERY

24 West 90 Street, New York, NY 10024

www.lorettahoward.com

ROTTET STUDIO

29 West 30th Street - 9th floor, New York, NY 10001

www.rottetstudio.com

Robert Motherwell @ Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London - A Survey of Prints

Robert Motherwell: A Survey of Prints
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London
17 January - 29 February, 2020

Bernard Jacobson Gallery presents an exhibition of prints by the American Abstract Expressionist artist Robert Motherwell (1915-1991). The exhibition is the most comprehensive show of his editioned work to date. It assembles around 80 of his best prints ranging from very early experimental pieces, to images from the groundbreaking collaboration with Ken Tyler and the more intimate and rare editions produced in the artist’s studio. Unique trial proofs are on display as well as preparatory works for the colourful collaged prints.

Throughout his long and distinguished career, Robert Motherwell produced a remarkable body of work that ranks among the most notable achievements in post-war American art. In addition to creating his celebrated paintings, drawings and collages, Robert Motherwell was a renowned and innovative printmaker, producing more than 500 works.

Robert Motherwell first learned about printmaking through the surrealists, who having emigrated from a troubled Europe to the States had established workshops there for artists to work together and exchange their ideas and thoughts.

His interest in printmaking was re-ignited in the 1960s. Having worked in large workshops such as Universal Art Editions and Hollander Workshop and gaining extensive experience in the various printmaking techniques during this period, Robert Motherwell decided in 1973 to buy his own etching and lithography press for his studio in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he was able to work independently and unburdened by the constraints of a large, commercial workshop. 

During the fruitful collaboration with Ken Tyler Robert Motherwell introduced his famous Elegy to the Spanish Republic theme into his printmaking. Five of these rare and powerful images will be on display in the show. These are shown alongside light collages of wine labels, cigarette packs which Robert Motherwell created later in his life. 

 “I do not smoke Gauloises cigarettes, but that particular blue of the label happens to attract me, so I possess it. …For a painter as abstract as myself, the collages offer a way of incorporating bits of the everyday world into pictures.”

Robert Motherwell’s inspiration through literature led him to create many livres d’artiste. Robert Motherwell describes his idea of collaborating with poets: “My vocabulary works only with poetry, that is to say with non-narrative writing to which my visual metaphors can be matched with verbal metaphors springing from the same kind of source…not illustration, but a series of explosions of fireworks, or oppositely, a kind of restrained silence”, Octavio Paz who like Robert Motherwell moved in surrealist circles in the late 40s was through his psychic automatism in literature the perfect inspiration for this artist book “Octavio Paz. Three Poems” which will be shown in the exhibition for the first time. The 27 lithographs were produced sparing no expensive and had gone “beyond bookness” as Robert Motherwell characterised the ambitious project. 

This exhibition at Bernard Jacobson Gallery is a comprehensive display of the visual vocabulary of Robert Motherwell’s oeuvre. Elegies, motifs from the open series, gestural prints and collages show the wide range of Robert Motherwell’s art and the creativity in his printmaking which make him one of the most prolific and adventurous printmakers of his time.

BERNARD JACOBSON GALLERY
28 Duke Street St. James's, London, SW1Y 6AG
jacobsongallery.com

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Robert Motherwell: Abstract Expressionism @ Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London

Robert Motherwell: Abstract Expressionism

Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London

16 September – 26 November 2016

Bernard Jacobson Gallery presents Robert Motherwell: Abstract Expressionism. The exhibition is an opportunity to investigate the various forms of abstract expressionist art from Robert Motherwell’s long and distinguished career through carefully selected masterpieces in painting and collage, including his great final collage, The Blue Guitar (1990-91) which references Pablo Picasso’s famous blue period painting, The Old Guitarist.

These remarkable works give witness to an era of unparalleled creative evolution, invention and energy in America, also demonstrated in the work of the Beat Poets and free jazz; a truly pivotal time in the history of 20th century art where the vanguard had moved from Europe to America as the predominant cultural force for the first time.

Arriving in New York from California in 1940 to study Art History at Columbia University, Robert Motherwell was at the epicentre of that seismic change, and sensing the heady atmosphere of experimentation around him, had soon dropped out of academia to pursue his overwhelming interest in Modernism with a full-time career as an artist.

Although younger than the other artists, Robert Motherwell was to become a cornerstone of the group later to become known as the Abstract Expressionists (or New York School) which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning - although unlike them, Robert Motherwell’s interest was exclusively for abstraction rather than beginning in figuration.

Robert Motherwell’s pursuit of Abstraction was in part influenced by his early interest and study in philosophy, honed with a post-graduate degree in the subject from Harvard University and later developed through his study of the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. It was his discovery of the principles of Surrealist psychic automatism however, gained through his friendship with Roberto Matta, that was finally to equip him with the physical process with which to create a new kind of dynamic, abstract art.

Selected highlights of the works on display at Bernard Jacobson Gallery include:

The Studio (1987) - A painting representing a recurring theme in Robert Motherwell’s art, which can be read both as a kind of self-portrait, as well as referencing Matisse’s Red Studio and Picasso’s The Studio, a work which Robert Motherwell knew well from the collection of Peggy Guggenheim.

Mexican Window (1974) - A stunning work from the Open series of paintings in which the artist returns to his 1941 trip to Mexico with Matta and his discovery of the ochre walls of adobe dwellings and the heat of the desert that was to continue to influence his palette thereafter.

Bernard Jacobson is widely acknowledged as an expert on the life and work of Robert Motherwell, publishing in 2015 Robert Motherwell: The Making of an American Giant, the first biography of Robert Motherwell written by Bernard Jacobson. Over the last 10 years Bernard Jacobson Gallery has held a series of critically acclaimed exhibitions looking at different aspects of Robert Motherwell’s multi-faceted oeuvre.

Robert Motherwell

The Making of an American Giant

By Bernard Jacobson

21 Publishing, 2015

This exhibition at Bernard Jacobson Gallery provides an opportunity for visitors to the Royal Academy’s Abstract Expressionism exhibition to look further into the art of one of the key members of the Abstract Expressionist movement. The gallery will also have a one man presentation of works by Robert Motherwell at Frieze Masters this October.

BERNARD JACOBSON GALLERY

28 Duke Street St. James's, London SW1Y 6AG

jacobsongallery.com

Color Field Works from the 1960s and 1970s @ Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, curated by Hayden Dunbar

Openness and Clarity: Color Field Works from the 1960s and 1970s
Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles
June 7 — August 2, 2014

Honor Fraser Gallery presents Openness and Clarity: Color Field Works from the 1960s and 1970s, curated by HAYDEN DUNBAR. The show includes works by Josef Albers, Anthony Caro, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and Frank Stella.

Assembling works rarely exhibited in Los Angeles, Openness and Clarity seeks to examine the pivotal role that Color Field painters and their direct predecessors played in the evolution of abstract art, while also proving the work's persisting ability to captivate the contemporary eye. The title of the exhibition references CLEMENT GREENBERG's catalog essay for his seminal 1964 exhibition, Post Painterly Abstraction, which championed a new group of artists that rejected painterliness in favor of an "openness and clarity" in color and contour. Organized for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the exhibition introduced thirty-one artists whose restrained arrangements of saturated color in vaporous soft-edged shapes and geometrical hard-edged forms reacted to the dense, gestural brushwork and raw emotion of the Abstract Expressionists. Diminishing distinctions between object and ground, these paintings formed a cool-headed and fresh visual language that de-emphasized line to privilege the perceptual effects of color: "What sets the best Color Field paintings apart is the extraordinary economy of means with which they manage not only to engage our feelings but also to ravish the eye." (Karen Wilkin, Color As Field: American Painting, 1950 – 1975, p. 17.)

Marking the fiftieth anniversary of LACMA's historic exhibition, Openness and Clarity presents a selection of exceptional works by five artists who were integral to Clement Greenberg's thesis and were instrumental in advancing abstraction in the 1960s and 1970s: Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and Frank Stella. Though not included in Post Painterly Abstraction, the works of JOSEF ALBERTS establish a direct link between these artists' early and ongoing emphasis on color and form. As a teacher at Black Mountain College and Yale University, his work and ideas set a foundation for younger artists to expand upon and rebel against. His inclusion in this exhibition also underscores the social framework within which all of these artists were working and which provided a sphere of mutual influence. Josef Albers's Homage to the Square: Warm-Near (1966) is an example of his commitment to pure geometry and the interaction of color.

Using an all-over staining technique to achieve lyrical, floating shapes and radiant hues, HELEN FRANKENTHALER poured and applied washes of thinned paint with rags in works like Bach's Sacred Theater (1973). After Clement Greenberg showed him Helen Frankenthaler's work, MORRIS LOUIS followed her lead and embarked on intense experimentation with materials and color that led to the various acclaimed series he completed before his untimely death at age forty-nine. Kaf (1959-1960) is from his Floral series, an excellent and rarely seen example of Morris Louis's breakthrough work. Clement Greenberg also introduced KENNETH NOLAND to Hellen Frankenthaler's innovations, and like Louis (Noland's close friend) he embraced the potential of staining unprimed canvas with thinned pigments. A student of Josef Albers, Kenneth Noland invigorated his devotion to geometry with unusually shaped and stained canvases, as can be seen in works like Bolton Landing: Singing the Blues (1962) and Warm Weekend (1967). A close friend of Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, JULES OLISKI was a bold colorist whose biomorphic forms alternately floated in monochromatic fields (as in Mushroom Joy [1959]) and pushed at the edges of the canvas (as in Z [1964]).

Known as an Abstract Expressionist and part of The New York School, ROBERT MOTHERWELL took a minimal approach to the use of color in the late 1960s, creating a series of expansive, nearly monochromatic canvases. Open No. 20: In Orange with Charcoal Line (1968) demonstrates Robert Motherwell's interest in color and composition as subjects. Like Robert Motherwell and Kenneth Noland, FRANK STELLA turned to painting as the subject matter for painting, pushing beyond the conventional rectilinear limits of the canvas and challenging notions of painting and objecthood. Sunapee IV (1966) from Franck Stella's Irregular Polygon series demonstrates his ability to marry color and form. On loan from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Ctesiphon I (1968) is part of Franck Stella's Protractor Variation series and exemplifies the rigor and energy for which he became so well known. These radical geometries are echoed in ANTHONY CARO's Dumbfound (1976). On a 1960 visit from England to the United States, Anthony Caro met Clement Greenberg, Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, and the sculptor David Smith, all of whom made a lasting impression on him. Returning to England, Anthony Caro developed a monochromatic collage style that favored open forms and horizontality, which can be seen in Dumbfound (1976).

Openness and Clarity pays tribute to the legacy of Color Field artists who paved the way for Minimalism, Conceptual, and Pop art, creating an enduring shift in the course of art history that can still be seen today.

HONOR FRASER GALLERY
2622 S. La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90034
honorfraser.com