Robert Motherwell Summer of 1971 (1972)

At work on his Elegies and Windows series Motherwell examines his place in the Abstract Expressionist movement which he calls the first original American movement in the mainstream and its practitioners the last romantics He distinguishes between his large paintings and his intimate papier collée Motherwell recollects the state of American art in the 1940s and the impact of European emigré painters on the younger generation of emerging artists He discusses the significance of collage or papier collée as an artists medium and explains how he first became involved with this process Motherwell offers his interpretations of earlier directions in art and his response to the object oriented painting that emerged in America in the 1960s A unique document of one of the founding members of the New York School He died in 1991