Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) was born on January 4, 1915, in Aberdeen, Washington. A young talent, he was awarded a fellowship to the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles at age eleven, and in 1932 studied painting briefly at the California School of Fine Art in San Francisco. Motherwell received a BA from Stanford University in 1937 and later enrolled for graduate work in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University in Cambridge. While traveling abroad to Europe, he began painting again in earnest and soon had his first solo exhibition at Raymond Dune Gallery in Paris in 1939.

In 1940, Motherwell settled in New York City, where he entered Columbia University to study art history with Meyer Schapiro, who encouraged him to pursue his talents as a visual artist. His circle of friends also included many major figures in what was to become the Abstract Expressionist movement: Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, and Jackson Pollock. In 1942 Motherwell was included in the exhibition First Papers of Surrealism at the Whitelaw Reid Mansion, New York. He became editor of the Documents of Modern Art series of books two years later, contributing frequently to the literature on Modern art.

Motherwell was unusual, in that his works were essentially abstract from the very beginning, and throughout his career he experimented with a variety of media including painting, printmaking, and collage. His work, created by free association, is often characterized by black geometric shapes floating on a white or color field background. As he enthusiastically embraced printmaking, Motherwell collaborated with master printmakers in the United States and Europe. He synthesized his unique abstract style with the materials and technical characteristics of printmaking, to create over 200 editions over the next 30 years.

A solo exhibition of Motherwell's work was held at Art of This Century Gallery in 1944. Soon thereafter, he began to associate with Herbert Ferber, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. In 1946, Motherwell had solo exhibitions at Arts Club of Chicago and San Francisco Museum of Art, and also participated in Fourteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The artist subsequently taught and lectured throughout the United States, and continued to exhibit extensively in the United States and abroad. In 1976-77, A Motherwell exhibition took place at the Stidtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, the Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts, Vienna, and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

He was also given important solo exhibitions at the Royal Academy, London, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, in 1978. A retrospective of his works, organized by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, traveled in the United States from 1983 to 1985.

From 1971 the artist lived and worked in Greenwich, Connecticut. He died on July 16, 1991, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, at the age of 76.