No. 4 (From The Basque Suite) 1970

Robert Motherwell made this print, one of his Basque Suite, using lithography, a process that loves to reveal the hand. Look at the big black shape. It's like a Rorschach test. See how some parts of the black ink are dense and velvety, while others are broken and ragged, almost disintegrating? The orange background isn’t just flat color, there’s texture and variation, you can almost see the ghost of a brushstroke, or some other tool, creating a push and pull. That sense of process gives the print an emotional charge. It’s not trying to fool you into thinking it’s something else; it’s just ink on paper, but it's also a space for thinking. Motherwell was influenced by the surrealists and their ideas about automatism. I see a connection to Goya. Both artists capture something about the raw edges of being human.