First Robert Motherwell show in Hong Kong a chance to assess Chinese influence on his art
The works of Motherwell, a contemporary of Pollock, de Kooning and Rothko and a fan of Chinese brush painting, are very undervalued, says Pearl Lam, who has long sought to show his work in Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, where just one major art museum is in operation, private art galleries and auction houses play an important role in art education by presenting museum-quality works. The latest example is the Robert Motherwell exhibition that opens at Pearl Lam Galleries in Central this week.
Motherwell (1915-1991) was one of America’s most influential modern artists, one who, unusually, was not only a groundbreaking painter but a writer about art able to describe and put into context the rise of abstract expressionism as it happened. He coined the name New York School for the group of artists among whom he worked in the 1950s and 1960s: Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, all undisputed giants of the modern art world.
If Pollock’s dripping technique is the most famous American manifestation of the European surrealists’ process of creating from the subconscious mind, then Motherwell’s approach may well be the most intellectual. The painter had studied philosophy and art history and, as a professional artist, had frequent dialogues about automatism with the colony of European surrealists who fled the war to live in the United States.
Motherwell was also a major player in the development of colour field painting alongside painters such as Rothko and Barnett Newman, and a mentor to Cy Twombly and others who would achieve great fame as artists.
This colossal figure in modern art has been dead 24 years but there has never been a solo exhibition of his work in Hong Kong until now, the 100th anniversary of his birth.