Robert Motherwell

Commissioned by Jack Welch for General Electric Company headquarters.
Previous owner: General Electric Company; Galerie Gmurzynska, New York; private collection, New York
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, Galerie Gmurzynska, 2021

The mural Arabesque was originally commissioned for the lobby of the General Electric Corporation headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut. The considerable fee of one million US dollars which Robert Motherwell received at the time is a clear indication of the importance of the commission, on which the artist worked intensively from 1987 to 1989. The composition of the painting is a reference to Henri Matisse, the pioneer of decorative mural painting in modernism. Matisse was one of several artists who influenced Motherwell over his career. In a monograph on Matisse, Motherwell marked quotes from the artist that he took to heart himself, including: ‘I have no theory when I am working. I am conscious only of the forces I am using; and the idea which drives me on …’ [1]

Motherwell paid homage to his great role model in the 1950s with the work La Danse II. Arabesque refers to a mural commissioned from Matisse by Albert C. Barnes for the main gallery of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia in 1932. Against a background of geometric blocks of colour, five elegant androgynous figures move like a dance across the gallery’s round arches. The relatively simple forms and small number of colour tones create a surprising intensity, which Motherwell also employed in Arabesque. In his signature colour palette of ochre ground, white, red and yellow, Motherwell juxtaposes geometric shapes with a curving, calligraphic black line stretching across the painting. Regarding his colour palette, the artist himself noted: ‘Generally, I use few colours: yellow ochre, vermilion, orange, cadmium green, ultramarine blue. Mainly, I use each colour as simply symbolic: ochre for the earth, green for the grass, blue for the sky and sea. I guess that black and white, which I use most often, tend to be the protagonists.’ [2]

Motherwell captured the rhythm and movement of the figures from La Danse in Arabesque. The title identifies the gestural form in his painting as an arabesque, a floral vine ornament recognisably created with a large brush from a grand gesture. Like Matisse, he used a stick to extend the brush when working on larger works, although he painted his pictures on the floor. In 1978, he explained: ‘I try to make my paintings abstract enough to be ambivalent and to work on several different levels, but not so abstract that their origins can’t be traced by someone acute enough to trace them.’ [3]

[1] Pierre Schneider: Henri Matisse, transl. by John Jacobus, New York 1983, p. 214.
[2] The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell, ed. by Stephanie Terenzio, New York 1992, pp. 135–137, here p. 135.
[3] Robert Motherwell, An Approach to Becoming a Painter, Speech at Carpenter Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 23. February 1978, quoted in: Joan Feigenbaum, ‘Artist Speaks At Carpenter, Lauds Matisse’, in: The Harvard Crimson, Online-Edition: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1978/2/24/artist-speaks-at-carpenter-lauds-matisse/