The subject does not pre-exist. It emerges out of the interaction between the artist and the medium. That is why, and only how a picture can be created, and why its conclusions cannot be predetermined. When you have a predetermined conclusion, you have "academic art" by definition.
— Robert Motherwell, 1980
Robert Motherwell’s Primal Sign IV (1980) marks the beginning of a pivotal decade in the artist’s printmaking career—a period during which he produced roughly half of the 460 prints made over his lifetime. This surge aligned with, yet remained distinct from, the broader “graphics renaissance” of the 1970s and 1980s, when many artists were rediscovering the expressive possibilities of printmaking.
For Motherwell, printmaking was never a passing trend. It was a sustained and deeply serious pursuit that spanned nearly his entire career. Among the first-generation Abstract Expressionists, he stands apart in the degree to which he treated printmaking as a parallel, rigorous practice—one driven by the same intellectual openness and experimental sensibility that shaped his painting.
Primal Sign IV was produced in Motherwell’s studio in Greenwich, Connecticut, and released by Petersburg Press in London. Other impressions are held in the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, the Walker Art Center, and the Museum of Modern Art. The impression currently available at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art carries notable provenance, having belonged to John P. Coolidge, director of Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum from 1948 to 1972.
Contemporary critics recognized the psychological charge of the print’s central form—described by one writer as “a complex, black, gestural stroke… meant to be as personally evocative as a Rorschach blot.” Not all responses were sympathetic. In 1982, The Los Angeles Times derided another print from the Primal Sign series as a “big black elephant-footed waterfall blob,” dismissing Motherwell’s graphic work as overly literary or self-conscious. In retrospect, that impatience reflects how sharply Motherwell was diverging from expectations. Rather than repeating the dramatic gestures associated with early Abstract Expressionism, he reduced his visual language to a single, controlled mark—its presence in Primal Sign IV against a rich copper-colored background a lyrical gesture.
Seen today, that restraint reads as prescient. Motherwell was not returning to old forms but probing how meaning might arise from the most economical means possible—an approach that aligns directly with his belief that “the subject does not pre-exist” but emerges through interaction with the medium.
Technically, Primal Sign IV was created through aquatint, lift-ground etching, and layered aquatint, with the collaboration of master printer Catherine Mosley. Mosley, who worked with Motherwell from the early 1970s until his death, was essential in achieving the dense tonal fields and crisp graphic precision that define the Primal Sign series. Their partnership developed into a disciplined, iterative working method—an embodiment of Motherwell’s description of printmaking as a “living collaboration.”
For readers wishing to explore Motherwell’s graphic work in greater depth, The Painter and the Printer: Robert Motherwell’s Graphics, 1943–1980 by Stephanie Terenzio—published by the American Federation of Arts and available digitally at no cost via the Museum of Modern Art—is an indispensable resource.
For information about the impression of Primal Sign IV referenced here, or to inquire about additional Motherwell prints available through the gallery, please email info@zanebennettgallery.com.
ROBERT MOTHERWELL | Primal Sign IV, 1980. Lift-ground etching and aquatint, image: 23 x 11 3/4 in (58.42 x 29.85 cm), paper: 29 3/4 × 21 in (75.57 x 53.34 cm), frame: 37 × 28 1/4 × 1 1/2 in (93.98 x 71.76 x 3.81 cm)
ROBERT MOTHERWELL | (Detail) Primal Sign IV, 1980. Lift-ground etching and aquatint, image: 23 x 11 3/4 in (58.42 x 29.85 cm), paper: 29 3/4 × 21 in (75.57 x 53.34 cm), frame: 37 × 28 1/4 × 1 1/2 in (93.98 x 71.76 x 3.81 cm)
ROBERT MOTHERWELL | (Detail) Primal Sign IV, 1980. Lift-ground etching and aquatint, image: 23 x 11 3/4 in (58.42 x 29.85 cm), paper: 29 3/4 × 21 in (75.57 x 53.34 cm), frame: 37 × 28 1/4 × 1 1/2 in (93.98 x 71.76 x 3.81 cm)
Photos by Marylene Mey, courtesy of Zane Bennett Contemporary Art
