Drawing With Color: Robert Motherwell’s Lyric Suite

This group of sixteen drawings from the Birmingham Museum of Art’s permanent collection represents a small portion of Robert Motherwell’s 1965 Lyric Suite series. Totaling around 565 works, this series of small, intimate drawings reflects Motherwell’s interest in form, materials, and chance. Lyric Suite also reveals the artist’s great capacity for what fellow artist Helen Frankenthaler called “drawing with color,” or conveying authentic emotion through color. This small exhibition explores the creative motivation, techniques, and process behind Motherwell’s series and the lasting influence it left on the artist.

Image credit: Robert Motherwell (American, 1915–1991), Lyric Suite, 1965, ink on rice paper; Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; Purchase with funds provided by the Merton Brown Estate and the Thelma Brown Trust, AFI.10.2001.9 (detail above)