Robert Motherwell was a heavyweight of American post-war painters and one of the most prolific of the abstract expressionists, with an energetic and varied career that continued until his death in 1991. Initially pursuing an academic career studying philosophy, first at Stanford and later Harvard, in 1939 Motherwell moved to New York to pursue his interest in art at Columbia University. He was encouraged to devote himself fully to painting under the tutelage of art historian Meyer Schapiro, and was introduced to the Surrealists and intellectuals who were arriving from war-torn Europe. Serving as a link between the European and American avant-garde, Motherwell would develop into one of the youngest and most vibrant members of the New York School, an informal vanguard of artists, poets, musicians and dancers active in the 1950s and 1960s. Motherwell was principally a proponent of the Surrealist methods of automatism, approaching painting without preconception and allowing the brush to move freely and spontaneously in order to express the interior, unconscious psyche. His large-scale canvases were defined principally by bold, gestural shapes against fields of colour, and drew inspiration from modernist literature, poetry, contemporary politics, and Symbolism. In addition to his canvases, Motherwell would produce hundreds of prints as well as collages over the course of his career, and was also a prolific writer and lecturer.