Open in Ochre

Motherwell, a key figure in the development of American abstract painting is known for his canvases of bold, loosely looped forms and rectangles painted in black and strung out across a white ground. This work, from the "Open" series begun in 1967, is a complete departure from that kind of painting and can be associated with the color fields of Barnet Newman or Mark Rothko. In the "Open" pictures, vertical lines are dropped from the upper edge of the canvas and joined by horizontal ones creating a kind of rectangular form within a monochromatic file of color. The lines do not specify or enclose a shape, but activate the color field and acknowledge the flat, two dimensional plane of the canvas.