Robert Motherwell Drawings: A Catalogue Raisonné

Yale University Press have published the definitive two-volume publication documents Motherwell’s 1,413 known drawings and is an essential resource for artists, scholars, collectors, and aficionados. Authored by Katy Rogers, the first volume explores the significance of drawing throughout Motherwell’s career and illuminates how his drawings both inform and are distinct from his work in other media; it also includes a detailed bibliography and exhibition history of his drawings. The second volume illustrates and includes comprehensive entries for each of the drawings.

The drawings of Robert Motherwell are critical to understanding his career as a whole, but they have been underexplored in scholarship. Motherwell’s drawings in graphic mediums such as pencil, charcoal, and crayon, or non-paint liquid mediums such as ink and watercolor, represent a subset of his artistic practice distinct from his works in paint on paper (which were included in the 2012 catalogue raisonné of his paintings and collages). 

Robert Motherwell Drawing: As Fast as the Mind Itself, a major retrospective of the artist's drawings, will open on November 18, 2022 at the Menil Drawing Institutue in Houston, Texas. The exhibition is curated by Edouard Kopp, John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Chief Curator, Menil Drawing Institute.