American artist Robert Motherwell studied literature, psychology and philosophy at Stanford University and philosophy at Harvard University before turning to art in the 1930s. Influenced by the expatriate Surrealists in New York, his experiments with automatism lead him to become a leading figure among the Abstract Expressionist painters of the 1940s. Motherwell had his first solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery in New York in 1944. He is represented in major collections worldwide.