Walker Art Center receives gift from Motherwell estate

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Walker Art Center has been given over 200 prints from the estate of abstract expressionist artist Robert Motherwell.

The gift makes the Walker's collection of the artist's prints the largest in the country. The Walker already owned 350 Motherwell prints and works on paper, including more than 150 that the artist donated in 1984.

Although best known as a painter, Motherwell (1915-1991) also was a prolific printmaker who worked in lithographs, silkscreens, etchings, intaglio, aquatint and collage. Those and other media are represented in the gift, which also includes about 100 engraved copper plates Motherwell used to make his prints.

The prints date from 1961 to 1991 and include abstract images inspired by many of the distinctively literary, philosophical and travel themes for which Motherwell is known.

The prints are a gift from Angus and Margaret Wurtele of Minneapolis, longtime supporters of the Walker, and the Daedalus Foundation, a New York City-based organization that administers Motherwell's estate and helps place his art in museums around the world. In 1995, the Wurteles gave the Walker a 33-piece collection of the artist's work that included seven paintings, 21 drawings and five collages.

The Walker declined to estimate the value of the gift.