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Robert Motherwell [1915-1991] is considered a leading spokesman for abstract expressionism. For a time, he was married to Helen Frankenthaler — also an American abstract painter whose work I love and encourage you to explore.

Motherwell’s training in philosophy prepared him to speak for the avant garde of his day, as he described the cognitive process involved, offered paint process theory, and championed non-objective work. Motherwell explores the artist’s role in modern society as he clarified the philosophical basis for abstraction. 

TRANSCENDING LITERALISM

In 1941, Motherwell met Chilean artist Roberto Matta who introduced him to a painting and drawing process called ‘automatism’ — a free-style process that Surrealists were using to access unconscious content for their work. Sharing Freud’s views of the unconscious, this grew into ‘plastic automatism’, a method for accessing latent material directly, without words – like music, like dance.

Motherwell is recorded as stating that Americans could “paint like angels” if they were to have a “creative principle” to guide them. A foundation for this principle did appear earlier, in 1911, when Wassily Kandinsky published Concerning the Spiritual in Art. 

A Russian national, Kandinsky explored art as an expression of inner life rather than external representation. His insights will later inform work by John Dewy in Art as Experience, and Anton Ehrenzweig in The Hidden Order of Art.

Marsha Plafkin Hurwitz

March 10, 2026