"The problem is to seize the glimpse." — Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell (1915-91), painter, printmaker, author and editor once opined that abstract art was a romantic response to modern life because it was "rebellious, individualistic, unconventional, sensitive, irritable."

You couldn't find five more appropriate adjectives to describe "Robert Motherwell: Te Quiero," an exhibit of the artist's work at the Salt Lake Art Center through May 31.

Born in Aberdeen, Wash., Motherwell's family relocated to Salt Lake City (1919-26) where they lived until the 11-year-old was awarded a fellowship to the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles.

He studied painting at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco in 1932 and received a bachelor's degree in philosophy at Stanford in 1937.

While pursuing a graduate degree in philosophy at Harvard, Motherwell dropped out and enrolled in an art history course at Columbia University in New York City, taught by the celebrated art historian Meyer Shapiro. It was Shapiro who persuaded Motherwell to take up painting professionally.

His first solo exhibition was in 1944 at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century Gallery, where he exhibited abstract figurative works that showed the influence of "automatism," a Surrealist technique of working rapidly and spontaneously.

In 1948 Motherwell, together with other New York artists, founded the Subjects of the Artist School, a catalyst in the rise of the most-celebrated first fully home-grown American art movement: Abstract Expressionism.

By 1949 Motherwell was employing bold slabs of paint, often ovals or upright rectangles, simple, serene and massive forms applied in black paint. This developed into the artist's "Elegies to the Spanish Republic" series, the first being painted a dozen years after Franco's violent coup d'etat in Spain; it was a theme which preoccupied the artist for the rest of his life.

The "Elegy to the Spanish Republic #128," (acrylic on canvas) that we encounter in the SLAC exhibit, is 80 by 106 inches; it is a graphic, gesticulated scream against oppression, a powerful metaphor for life and death, and sure to be a favorite of many viewers.

"Te Quiero" (acrylic and collage on paper, 49 by 37 inches, 1972), one of several pieces in the "Je t'aime" series (French for 'I love you'), was created during a time of misery for the artist. The fracturing of space, thinly applied paint and position of the torn envelope evidence this. It is a wonderful work and the piece for which the exhibit is named.

A number of collages and sketches are included in the exhibit. The collages are complete, in and of themselves, employing paper scraps that are personal — cigarette packages, newspaper clippings, wine labels, etc.