MOTHERWELL Robert

(1915 – 1991)

Upon his return to the United States in 1940, Robert Motherwell moves to New York. He studies art history at Columbia University. In 1941, he meets the exiled Surrealists André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, André Masson, Matta, and Yves Tanguy. He published in the Surrealist journal *VVV*, edited by Breton, Ernst, Duchamp, and the painter David Hare; practiced automatic writing with Jackson Pollock and William Baziotes; played chess with Max Ernst, who gave him a sculpture; and participated in the exhibition *First Papers of Surrealism* (1942).