MEASUREMENTS:24"HX32"W FRAMED, MINT CONDITION/"in the style of"Robert Motherwell was an American abstract expressionist painter, printmaker, and editor. He was one of the youngest of the New York School, which also included Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. In 1940, Motherwell moved to New York to study at Columbia University, where he was encouraged by Meyer Schapiro to devote himself to painting rather than scholarship. Schapiro introduced the young artist to a group of exiled Parisian Surrealists (Max Ernst, Duchamp, Masson) and arranged for Motherwell to study with Kurt Seligmann. The time that Motherwell spent with the Surrealists proved to be influential to his artistic process. After a 1941 voyage with Roberto Matta to Mexico—on a boat where he met Maria Emilia Ferreira y Moyeros, an actress and his future wife—Motherwell decided to make painting his primary vocation.The sketches Motherwell made in Mexico later evolved into his first important paintings, such as The Little Spanish Prison (1941) and Pancho Villa, Dead and Alive (1943)./Private collection, no documentation.