New York
                               after a trip to Mexico, & not finally explored.
   In 1991, shortly before he died,
                                  Motherwell
  remembered a "conspiracy of silence"
                       regarding Paalen´s innovative role in the genesis of Abstract Expressionism.

Upon return from Mexico,                       Motherwell
              spent time developing his creative principle
              based on automatism:
   "what I realized was that Americans
     potentially could paint like angels,              but that there
     was no effective                        creative principle around,                
     so that everybody
     who liked modern art        was copying it;
                           Gorky was copying Picasso;
                         ******* was copying Picasso;
                  De Kooni
                                  ng was copying Picasso;
              I mean,          I say this unqualifiedly,    
              I was painting French intimate pictures or whatever:
            All we needed was a creative principle,
            I mean something that would mobilize this capacity
to paint in a creative way,                   & that's what Europe
                        had that we
                        hadn't had;                        
                        we had always followed in their wake
                        &       I thought of all the possibilities
            |               [                    ], [                 ]
   of free association—because I also had
   a psychoanalytic background
& I understood the implications of—let's just say it
might be the best chance
                          to really make something entirely
new which everybody agreed was the thing to do;"
Thus, in the early 1940s,          Robert Motherwell
played a significant role in laying the foundations
for the new movement of
Abstract Expressionism (or the New York School):
                 "Matta wanted to start a revolution,  m [a movement w/in
                   Surrealism].
                  He asked me to find some other
                  American artists that would help start   a new movement;
                  it was then that Baziotes
                                           & I went to see ******* & de Kooning
      & Hofmann & Kamrowski &     Busa & several other people;
     &                                           if we could come with something;
     Peggy Guggenheim, who liked us said that she
     would put on a show of this new business;
     ... so I went around explaining         the theory of automatism
     to everybody because the only way
     that you could have a move - - - ment
     was that it had some common
                                                        principle. It sort of all began that way."

In 1942 Motherwell began to exhibit
       his work in New York and in 1944
       he had his first one-man show at
       Peggy Guggenheim’s “Art of This Century” gallery;
                  that same year,                   the MoMA
                  was the first museum
                  purchase one of his works;   From the mid-1940s,
                  Motherwell [                   ], [                 ]. (            )
                  became the leading spokesman
                  for avant-garde art in America;
                  his circle coming to include                        
                  William Baziotes,
                  David Hare, Barnett Newman,                         & Mark Rothko,
with whom he eventually             started the Subjects of the Artist School (1948–49). In 1949 Motherwell divorced
            Maria Emilia Ferreira y Moyeros    and in 1950 he married Bettie
                                                                ­  Little,
                                                                ­  with whom he had two daughters