Artist: Robert Motherwell
Title: The Bed (from The Ulysses Portfolio)
Medium: Screenprint Etching in Color on Johannot Paper
Image Size: 4.375" h x 6" w
Sheet Size: 13" h x 10.125" w
Edition: 27/40
Publisher: Arion Press, San Francisco
Printer: R.E. Townsend, Georgetown, MA
Year: 1988
Inscription: Signed and numbered on front lower right "RM 27/40"
Documentation: Includes Gallery Certificate of Authenticity from Modern Artifact
Robert Motherwell's "The Bed" forms part of the artist's 1988 Ulysses Portfolio, a series of works created in dialogue with James Joyce's seminal modernist novel. The project, published by Arion Press, brought together contemporary artists who responded visually to Joyce's dense and experimental text. Motherwell, long recognized for his engagement with literature and philosophy, contributed this work as a reflection of the novel's capacity to merge the intimate and the monumental.
The composition presents a strikingly minimal field: a saturated rectangle of yellow serves as the ground for a delicate, linear configuration in black. Executed with an economy of means, the line work suggests both abstraction and figuration, evoking forms that oscillate between corporeal presence and gestural notation. This ambiguity is central to Motherwell's visual language, which frequently balanced clarity of form with open-ended interpretation. The title, "The Bed", lends a layer of narrative suggestion, aligning the imagery with themes of intimacy, vulnerability, and the interior spaces of life that Joyce's novel so often explored.
Produced late in the artist's career, "The Bed" underscores Motherwell's continued engagement with printmaking as a vehicle for experimentation. Collaborating with master printer R.E. Townsend, he translated his expressive sensibility into a medium that emphasizes both precision and spontaneity. With its careful balance of color, line, and literary allusion, the piece situates itself within Motherwell's lifelong pursuit of merging visual abstraction with the complexities of human thought and experience.
This impression, numbered 27 of an edition of 40, is signed and inscribed by the artist and is accompanied by a gallery certificate of authenticity from Modern Artifact.
About Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell was a central figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement and among the most articulate spokesmen of its philosophical and aesthetic principles. Born in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1915, Motherwell grew up in California, where he developed an early interest in both art and literature. He studied philosophy at Stanford University and later pursued graduate studies in art history at Harvard University under the noted scholar Meyer Schapiro. Schapiro, recognizing Motherwell's artistic inclinations, encouraged him to pursue painting more directly, a decision that would shape the trajectory of his career.
In 1941, Motherwell moved to New York, where he encountered a group of European Surrealists who had relocated to the United States during World War II. Exposure to Surrealist techniques, particularly automatic drawing, expanded his understanding of artistic process and introduced him to the importance of the subconscious in artmaking. Around this time, Motherwell also befriended artists such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko, becoming one of the youngest members of the emerging Abstract Expressionist circle.
Motherwell's early works display the Surrealist influence, but his mature style developed in the 1940s with the initiation of his celebrated Elegies to the Spanish Republic series. These large-scale paintings, characterized by bold black forms set against white or colored backgrounds, served as both political lament and formal exploration. While the subject matter referenced the Spanish Civil War, the series evolved into a meditation on universal themes of tragedy, loss, and human resilience. The Elegies would remain a central motif throughout Motherwell's career, spanning over two hundred works across four decades.
Motherwell distinguished himself not only as a painter but also as a writer and editor. He played a crucial role in shaping the intellectual foundations of Abstract Expressionism, editing the influential anthology The Dada Painters and Poets (1951), which introduced avant-garde European ideas to a wider American audience. His writings, lectures, and interviews conveyed a deep engagement with philosophy, literature, and politics, underscoring his belief in the interconnectedness of art and thought.
Over the course of his career, Motherwell explored a range of stylistic approaches, from the gestural brushwork of Abstract Expressionism to the more refined, collage-like works of the 1960s and 1970s. Collage, in particular, became an important medium for him, allowing the juxtaposition of printed materials, textures, and painterly gesture in dynamic compositions. His sensitivity to materials and form was matched by a consistent preoccupation with the expressive potential of abstraction.
Motherwell exhibited widely during his lifetime, with major retrospectives organized by institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. His work is represented in significant public and private collections worldwide.
Motherwell died in 1991 in Provincetown, Massachusetts, leaving behind a legacy as both a pioneering artist and an articulate theorist of modern art. His synthesis of painterly abstraction with intellectual depth secured his place as one of the defining voices of mid-twentieth-century American art.
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