The Master of Gesture: Robert Motherwell’s Journey into Printmaking
In the autumn of 1943, a young Robert Motherwell stood in Stanley William Hayter’s legendary Atelier 17 workshop in New York, watching the master printmaker demonstrate the ancient art of engraving. Motherwell, then thirty-eight and still finding his artistic voice, had come to the workshop on the recommendation of fellow artists who spoke of Hayter’s revolutionary approach to printmaking. What he discovered there would transform not only his own artistic practice but help elevate printmaking to new heights within American abstract art.
Motherwell had arrived at printmaking through an indirect path. Born in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1915, he had initially pursued philosophy and literature, earning degrees from Stanford and Harvard. His entry into the visual arts came relatively late, but when the Surrealists arrived in New York during World War II, Motherwell found himself drawn into their circle. It was Max Ernst who first suggested he visit Hayter’s workshop, recognizing in the younger artist a philosophical mind that might appreciate the conceptual possibilities of printmaking.
At Atelier 17, Motherwell encountered a community of international artists who were reimagining what prints could be. Hayter’s workshop was revolutionary in its approach, encouraging experimentation with new techniques and treating printmaking not as mere reproduction but as an original creative medium. The collaborative atmosphere fascinated Motherwell, who had always been interested in the intersection of individual expression and shared cultural experience.
His first serious engagement with lithography came in the 1960s, when he began working with master printer Tatyana Grosman at Universal Limited Art Editions on Long Island. Grosman had established ULAE in 1957 with the vision of bringing America’s leading painters into the printmaking studio, and she possessed an almost mystical ability to convince artists to try new approaches to their work. When she approached Motherwell, he was initially hesitant. He had spent decades developing his distinctive vocabulary of forms – particularly his famous “Elegy to the Spanish Republic” series – in oil and collage. The idea of translating these concepts to stone seemed daunting.
But Grosman was persuasive, and Motherwell’s first lithograph, created in 1961, proved to be a revelation. Working on the limestone surface, he discovered that the medium’s directness appealed to his gestural approach to mark-making. The lithographic crayon responded to his touch in ways that felt immediate and honest, capturing the spontaneous quality that was central to his aesthetic philosophy. “In lithography,” he would later write, “there is something magical about the way the stone accepts and holds the artist’s gesture.”
Over the following decades, Motherwell created more than 300 prints, working primarily in lithography but also exploring etching, aquatint, and screenprinting. His print work became a parallel investigation to his paintings, sometimes directly translating motifs from canvas to stone, other times discovering entirely new possibilities that only emerged through the printmaking process. His “A la Pintura” series of 1971-1972, inspired by Rafael Alberti’s poem celebrating painting, represents perhaps his most ambitious printmaking project—a suite of twenty-four lithographs and screenprints that function as both homage to the history of art and a statement of his own artistic philosophy.
What made Motherwell’s approach to printmaking distinctive was his refusal to treat it as a secondary medium. He understood that each print technique had its own inherent qualities and possibilities, and he worked to discover what could be uniquely expressed through these processes. His lithographs often featured the bold, sweeping gestures that characterized his paintings, but they also revealed subtleties of texture and tone that were specific to the medium. In his etchings, he explored more linear approaches, finding ways to make the bitten line carry the same emotional weight as his painted brushstrokes.
Motherwell’s commitment to printmaking also reflected his broader artistic philosophy. As one of the founders of Abstract Expressionism, he believed deeply in the importance of individual expression, but he also understood art as a form of communication that connected the artist to broader cultural traditions. Printmaking, with its inherent reproducibility, offered a way to share his artistic vision more widely while still maintaining the integrity of original creation.
The collaborative nature of printmaking also appealed to Motherwell’s intellectual temperament. He enjoyed working with master printers, learning from their technical expertise while contributing his own artistic vision. These partnerships, particularly his long relationships with printers like Donn Steward and Kenneth Tyler, resulted in some of his most innovative work. The printer became, in Motherwell’s view, a creative collaborator rather than merely a technician reproducing the artist’s ideas.
In his later years, Motherwell continued to push the boundaries of what was possible in printmaking. His “Red Studio” series of the 1980s demonstrated his ongoing willingness to experiment, combining multiple printing techniques in single works and exploring the expressive possibilities of color in ways that influenced a generation of younger printmakers.
When Robert Motherwell died in 1991, he left behind a legacy that had fundamentally changed the status of printmaking in American art. Through his example, he had shown that prints could be as powerful and significant as paintings, deserving of serious critical attention and museum collection. His influence extended beyond his own work to inspire countless artists to explore printmaking as a primary medium of expression rather than a secondary craft.
Today, Motherwell’s prints are held in major collections worldwide, recognized not as reproductions of his paintings but as independent works of art that reveal unique aspects of his creative vision. His journey from that first tentative visit to Atelier 17 to becoming one of America’s master printmakers demonstrates how an artist’s willingness to embrace new techniques and collaborative processes can lead to profound expansions of creative possibility.
