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Read the press release here.

Motherwell's Early Collages to Go on View at the Guggenheim

By Eliza Fawcett | August 15, 2013 8:47am
 The exhibit, opening in September, showcases many of the artist's earliest collages.
“Robert Motherwell: Early Collages”
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UPPER EAST SIDE — The Guggenheim Museum will pay homage to innovative painter and collagist Robert Motherwell, whose career was catapulted to fame thanks to the museum's backers.

“Robert Motherwell: Early Collages” will showcase fifty artworks from the first decades of Motherswell's artistic career in the 1940s and 1950s, and explores its inspiration from the postwar Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist movements.

The Guggenheim’s ties with Motherwell run deep. Peggy Guggenheim, the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, the museum’s founder, provided crucial early support to Motherwell, Guggenheim representatives said in a statement.

In fact, it was partly because of her influence that Motherswell began collaging in the first place, in 1943. Soon after, Motherwell was featured in Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery among other collagists, and she later hosted his first solo exhibition in America.

“By cutting, tearing, and layering pasted papers, Motherwell reflected the tumult and violence of the modern world, which established him as an essential and original voice in postwar American art,” the museum said in a statement.

The exhibit will run from September 27, 2013 to January 5, 2014.