Purchased with funds from the North Carolina State Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest) and Arthur Leroy and Lila Fisher Caldwell, by exchange, and Gift of the Dedalus Foundation, Inc.
American artist Robert Motherwell is considered to be the most expressive of the abstract expressionist painters. Abstract expressionism is an art movement that lasted from the 1940s until the 1960s. Abstract expressionist artists used color, line, and shape to express their personal thoughts and feelings instead of painting things that looked real. Motherwell thought of abstract art as a way to use his imagination to make sense of things that we as humans cannot see.
Dance is an abstract painting that expresses joyful energy, much like the energetic movement of dancing. The inkblot forms relate to the artist’s lifelong interest in automatic drawing. This Surrealist technique involved letting go of any need to control one’s brush or pen and creating freely, without a plan.
Beginning in the 1940s, Motherwell was one of the leaders of the New York School, an informal group of artists that started the abstract expressionist movement in the United States. He taught new artists how to use automatic drawing, which is similar to psychological techniques like free association. At the time that Motherwell painted Dance, free association was used in psychoanalytic therapy as a way to explore the subconscious mind and reveal hidden memories.
Motherwell also taught at Black Mountain College, a progressive college in Asheville, North Carolina, that focused on the importance of arts education.
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