Robert Motherwell

Marlborough Gallery, New York
J. L. Hudson Gallery, Detroit
Private Collection, New York
Christie's, New York, May 17, 2007, lot 159
Acquired by the present owner from the above sale

Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum, Robert Motherwell Works on Paper, April - May 1966
Detroit, The J. L. Hudson Gallery, Abstract Expressionism: A Continuing Tradition, November 1966
Bloomfield Hills, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Source: Detroit, December 1966 - January 1967

This work is in very good condition overall. There is scattered light and stable craquelure. There is evidence of light wear and handling around edges and corners. There is a 1/4 inch loss to the upper edge, located 3 inches from the upper right corner. There is no evidence of restoration under Ultraviolet light inspection. Framed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Robert Motherwell's career is not easily quantifiable or describable as he followed not one trajectory but many, frequently working in many styles and media at one time.  His tendency to work in series, investigating various technical and intellectual themes, provides the viewer with an incredible amount of digestible material and a more thorough illustration of his own processes.  

Summertime in Italy #15 is from a series he created over the course of several years beginning during a trip he took in 1960 to the Italian Riviera town of Alassio.  Alassio provided Motherwell with a wealth of material from which to work – his automatic process quickly internalizing his physical and emotional surroundings while expressing and projecting them upon the canvas.  The intensely saturated blue ground along the bottom edge evokes the azure tranquility of the Mediterranean.  Similarly, the jagged angularity of the central form, banded with green and brown, calls to mind the manner in which the mountains of the Riviera and the town of Alassio seem to rise directly from the sea.  As a classically trained philosopher with a great appreciation for Eastern modes of thought, Motherwell was able to express many ideas as one in Summertime in Italy #15 by invoking the natural and the manmade, the universal and the individual all by utilizing his new pictorial language of abstraction.