Many artistic milestones of the 20th century – works and movements such as Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Malevich’s Black Square, the Blue Rider group, or Black Mountain College – are celebrating or approaching their centennials.
The 2030s will also shape new movements in art. Epochal change is reflected here. What comes next? Where will we gather? Continuity in times of upheaval lies in the work of artists: no matter what, they remain in the studio.
Around 100 years ago, it became clear that the world’s attention would shift toward American painters. The transition from Paris to New York as the center of art was prepared by major collections such as that of Albert Barnes.
Bernard Jacobson describes this as a migration of painting itself, culminating in Clement Greenberg’s claim that the premises of Western art had moved to the United States.
We know the artists who followed: Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, among others.
A Robert Motherwell exhibition is long overdue. His work is groundbreaking in printmaking and collage, offering renewed engagement with perception and thought. His practice embodies the Peintre-Graveur concept: experience is layered and transformed into nonverbal, nonlinear knowledge on canvas.
Motherwell’s connection to John Cage, including the 1948 journal possibilities, is key. A drawing intended for its unrealized second issue became the origin of his major series Elegy to the Spanish Republic. Serial work, reflection, and printmaking define his oeuvre, especially after 1972.
He uniquely treated printmaking as equal in importance to his other work. Collage plays a central role, its force extending into his prints and remaining relevant today.
His concept of the “After Image” refers to invisible references: traces of art, literature, and experience embedded within the work. Each image carries residues of other works or moments – a layered visual and intellectual presence.
This forms a painterly-philosophical idea: the artwork as a site of memory and relation. Motherwell also incorporated everyday materials – papers, labels, packaging – into his compositions. In John Cage’s writings, he recognized a similar collage method: a network of quotations and associations creating richer dimensions than linear narrative.