Dr Marla Price, director, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, announced the start of Robert Motherwell: Pure Painting, the first exhibition in more than a quarter century to examine the work of Robert Motherwell (1915–1991), a major figure who shaped postwar art. The special exhibit runs through Sept. 17.

© Courtesy of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

The Modern is an especially fitting venue to mount this exhibition given its longstanding institutional commitment to the artist’s work, which dates to the 1960s and 70s. Today, the Modern holds more than 70 works by Motherwell in its permanent collection in a variety of media ranging from paintings, collages and prints. The assembly presented in this retrospective and catalogue represent a tribute to the success of his influential oeuvre, making special note of his organic revisionism.

The current exhibition is organized by guest curator Susan Davidson and features a selection of 56 visually compelling works throughout the artist’s career, including 12 paintings from the Modern’s collection. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue offer new insights into his evolution as an artist and his impact on Modernism. Although he was equally proficient as a collagist, printmaker and draftsman, it is Motherwell’s expansive sense of painting that this retrospective explores.

© Courtesy of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Beginning with the abstracted-figurative works that dominated Motherwell’s first decade of painting as he emerged in the New York art world of the early 1940s, the exhibition highlights the depth of his 50-year career. The artist explored the nuances of abstraction in key series that defined his oeuvre, including Elegies to the Spanish Republic, Je t’aime and Open. Motherwell invested his abstract paintings with both a profound and intellectual form of expressionism, and an expansive consciousness of historical traumas and injustices. He frequently invoked political subject matter and humanitarian themes, making his work especially relevant to audiences today. Robert Motherwell: Pure Painting offers a careful and thorough new reading of the artist’s development, revealing his fundamental desire to depict the unseen. Today, the Modern has a total of 72 works by the artist in its collection — a selection second only to that of Museum of Modern Art in New York.

© Courtesy of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated, full-color, 208-page catalogue, with 63 plates and 84 figures. The catalogue includes four essays highlighting fresh research into Motherwell’s life and work, and a comprehensive chronology of the artist’s life.

Admission prices include special exhibitions: $16 for general (ages 18 and above); $12 for seniors (ages 60+), active/retired military personnel and first responders with ID; $10 for students with ID; and free for visitors under 18. Half-price tickets on Sunday and free admission on Friday. The museum is closed Mondays and holidays.