Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA)

The present drawing was used as the cover for Modern Artists in America: First Series, co-edited by Robert Motherwell with Ad Reinhardt and Bernard Karpel and first published in 1951 by Wittenborn Shultz. According to the Dedalus Foundation, “The volume is a documentary account of the 1949–50 art season and features transcripts of 'The Artists’ Sessions at Studio 35’ and ‘The Western Round Table of Modern Art,’ among other texts.” Motherwell’s editorial position is a testament to the role he played as an early proponent of the burgeoning Abstract Expressionism movement; just three years earlier, in 1948, he painted the first in his series of more than 100 Elegy paintings, which would become some of his most widely recognized works. That same year, Motherwell joined the volume’s co-editor, Ad Reinhardt, along with Herbert Ferber and Barnett Newman to found the Subjects of the Artist school, which, as the Dedalus Foundation explains, was “meant to emphasize that even the most abstract art has subjects.”