(Re)thinking of Aesthetic Designs of Black Rectangles and Ovals in Robert Motherwell’s Elegy of the Spanish Republic

Abstract

Beginning in 1949, the Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell painted over 170 abstract works that constitute the series Elegies to the Spanish Republic. Despite its obvious relation to the political event of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), the existing studies on the Elegy series tend to focus on the formal features of the works, while ignoring the presence of political values. In this paper a political reading of the Elegy series is proposed that emphasizes its political aspects as well as the artist’s deep involvement with the Civil War. This view on the particularly controversial matter of the political nature of Motherwell’s series within the context of McCarthysm and anti-Communist Cold War will shed new light on one of the aspects of these paintings that has been most widely ignored by the critics.