Robert Motherwell and the New York School Storming the Citadel (1991)

Made shortly before Robert Motherwells death in 1991 is an exploration of the Abstract Expressionist movement and a portrait of one of its last survivors Having come to New York in the early 1940s Motherwell found himself on the battleground of American art He and a group of painters set out to change the face of American painting The film charts this epic battle led by Jackson Pollock Willem de Kooning Mark Rothko Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell who endeavored to make American painting equal to painting elsewhere and in the process shifted the center of modern art from Paris to New York