Robert Motherwell
A la pintura
04/03/2003 - 22/06/2003
Getty Center
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049
310/440-7300
http://www.getty.edu
ROBERT MOTHERWELL’S RARE ARTIST’S BOOK TRANSLATES HIS PAINTERLY
VISION INTO PRINT
Image: Robert Motherwell at Universal Limited Art Editions, 1972. Photo: Renate Ponsold Motherwell.
Working closely with a master printer who guided the translation of his
painterly impulses into print, Robert Motherwell produced A la
pintura (To Painting), a sumptuous artist’s book of aquatints and letterpress
texts that is one of the most important examples of this genre. The exhibition
will display all 24 sheets of the book held in the special collections
of the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute, along with Michael
Blackwood’s interview with Motherwell, filmed at the time of the
book’s creation in 1972. Motherwell created A la pintura as his
response to Spanish poet Rafael Alberti’s verses celebrating painting. It was
also a reaction to the repeated pleas by Tatyana Grosman to join the stable of
prominent artists and poets collaborating in her Universal Limited Art
Editions studios on Long Island, where the printmaking renaissance in
the United States first blossomed in 1958 under her devoted direction.
