On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the institution will display in the rotunda over 170 modern works from the permanent collections held in New York and Venice. Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim will explore not only avant-garde innovations from the late 19th through mid-20th centuries, but also the radical activities of six patrons who brought to light some of the most significant artists of their day. Foremost is the museum’s founder, Solomon R. Guggenheim (1861–1949), who with support from his trusted advisor, the German-born artist Hilla Rebay (1890–1967), set aside a more traditional collecting focus to become a great champion of nonobjective art—a strand of abstraction with spiritual aims and epitomized by the work of Vasily Kandinsky. Assembled against the backdrop of economic crisis and war in the 1930s and 1940s, Guggenheim’s unparalleled modern holdings formed the basis of his foundation, established in 1937 for the public good.

More from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to announce a forthcoming exhibition of the early paintings of Robert Motherwell, which will open on September 7, 2017. Comprised solely of paintings from the 1940s and early 1950s, the exhibition will be one of only two such solo presentations to focus on the artist’s early explorations in painting, and the first in New York City.

The paintings from this period trace Motherwell’s emergence from an initial Surrealist influence to the more gestural and expressionist paintings for which he has become canonized. Building on the revelation of Motherwell’s innovative approach to art-making that was solidified by the well-received exhibition, Robert Motherwell: Early Collages, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2013, this show aims to delve deeper into the artist’s ever-oscillating positions between representation and abstraction; automatism and pre-determination; and object versus image.

From Motherwell to Hofmann: The Samuel Kootz Gallery, 1945-1966 is the first exhibition that examines the critical role Kootz (1898–1982) played in establishing modern American art as an international force. Kootz’s New York gallery (operational 1945–1966) was instrumental in promoting the careers of several major Abstract Expressionist artists, including Robert Motherwell, Hans Hofmann, Adolph Gottlieb, and William Baziotes. Kootz was an alumnus of UVA, graduating in 1921, and also made a major gift of paintings to The Fralin in 1976–77. This exhibition was organized by the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia.

Kasmin is pleased to announce Sheer Presence: Monumental Paintings by Robert Motherwell, opening March 21, 2019, at the gallery’s flagship space at 509 West 27th Street. This unprecedented exhibition will be the first to focus solely on Motherwell’s approach to large-format painting and will be comprised of eight works spanning the 1960s - 1990, including a core group of paintings from the collection of The Dedalus Foundation. This will be the fourth exhibition on which Kasmin and The Dedalus Foundation have collaborated.

As one of the most novel and confident mark-makers of the Abstract Expressionist era, Motherwell consistently turned to the monumental canvas to pursue his lifelong ambition of realizing “sheer presence, beingness, as such, objectivity and true invention” (R. Motherwell, quoted in an interview with B. Robertson, “Robert Motherwell: Theme and Variations,” ART: New York, broadcast December 15, 1964).

For Motherwell, it was substantial scale that allowed for his intuitive gesturality to become amplified; resulting in paintings that are at once performative, dramatic and imposing. In 1965, Motherwell remarked, “The large format, at one blow, changed the century-long tendency of the French to domesticize modern painting, to make it intimate. We replaced the nude girl and the French door with a modern Stonehenge, with a sense of the sublime and the tragic that had not existed since Goya and Turner” (R. Motherwell, quoted in M. Kozloff, “An Interview With Robert Motherwell,” Artforum, September 1965, p. 37).

The paintings in the exhibition are representative of several major themes explored by Motherwell throughout his career. Dublin, 1916, with Black and Tan, 1963-64, at once alludes to the artist’s continued engagement with social and political ideas, and also reflects his pervading use of large, planar areas of color and spatial ambiguity. Also included in the exhibition is Open No. 97: The Spanish House, 1969, a striking composition from the artist’s seminal Open series. The work displays an expanse of vibrant orange, circumscribed by architectural lines. Its title refers to a house in the Spanish town of Cadaqués, a photograph of which Motherwell had on constant display in his studio—a testament to his enduring dedication to Spain as a subject.

Painted in 1989-90, shortly before Motherwell’s death, The Grand Inquisitor is a formidable example from the artist's last major series of paintings, The Hollow Men. Strongly related to the imagery of Motherwell’s ubiquitous Spanish Elegy series, the abstract forms are set against a bright ochre and bold red ground. Together, the works in Sheer Presence manifest the grandest of Motherwell’s technical facilities and painterly achievements.