Luke Elwes discusses Robert Motherwell’s work with Sam Cornish

I think for many it is ‘Elegy to the Spanish Republic’, that monumental series begun in 1949, which defines Motherwell’s place in the modernist canon. So it is refreshing to revisit him on a smaller scale in this show (the first dedicated to his work on paper in this country), and to see, beneath the shadow of his most iconic images, something more rapid, visceral and intuitive going on. You explore the role of automatism in your catalogue essay and his adherence to the unmediated mark is consistent throughout his work (with the possible exception of the ‘Open’ series, to which we might return) and reaches a daring crescendo in the ‘Lyric Suite’...

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