With Three
Personages, Robert Motherwell summed up his lifelong commitment to the
tragic and timeless in art, and its ability to chart the complexities of the
human condition. The composition is dominated by three loosely defined figures
drawn in charcoal and filled with semitransparent washes of sienna and
brilliant yellow. The painting has its origins in Motherwell’s Elegy to the Spanish Republic series
that he launched in the late 1940s. Four decades later, Motherwell returned
once again to this compositional theme, with ghostly outlines taking the place
of his earlier solid color forms.