Elegy Black Black

American painter, printmaker, and theorist Robert Motherwell is remembered for his many contributions to modern art as a pioneering member of the New York school of abstract expressionism. His theories on automatism and abstraction helped form the foundational creative principles of the movement. A prodigious painter and printmaker, Motherwell often explored recurrent themes and motifs over a period of years, even decades, such as the Elegies to the Spanish Republic series he began in 1948 and continued to revisit until his death in 1991. Elegy Black Black is one of the many scores of editioned prints that are part of this thematic group, each of which convey Motherwell’s deeply personal reflections on the fascist-lead destruction of democracy during the Spanish Civil War.