Why the Elegies Work at Small Scale

Motherwell spent much of his career on the Elegy to the Spanish Republic, a series of black forms set against pale ground. The compositions are simple enough to survive reduction. Two or three heavy black shapes, a strip of white, sometimes a sliver of red or ochre. At 50 cm wide the image still reads as an image, not as texture lost in shrinkage. That is not true of every Abstract Expressionist. De Kooning at small size turns to mud. Motherwell does not.

The practical advantage for a bedroom is tonal. A black and white print with one accent holds its own in low evening light, when a pastel or a busy composition goes gray and disappears. The Elegies also carry a gravity that suits a room where you want the walls quiet. One caveat worth stating plainly. The series is a lament for the Spanish Civil War, and some of it is somber company for a bedside. Choose a composition with an ochre or red accent if that bothers you. For a wider look at how these works behave in larger rooms, see the guide to Motherwell prints in a modern living room Motherwell in a living room.

The Open Series and Quieter Rooms

From the late 1960s onward Motherwell worked on the Open series, compositions built from a large rectangle of muted color interrupted by a smaller drawn rectangle. These are the least aggressive works he made. Washed blues, ochres, off whites. In a bedroom, where the eye rests more than it travels, that restraint is the point. A small Open series print behaves almost like a color field, changing with the light through the day.

The risk with these works is that at very small sizes they can read as nothing at all. A pale rectangle on a pale wall needs either contrast with the wall color or a frame to give it an edge. Below about 40 cm, most people find them too faint. Between 45 and 60 cm they work well. If you are weighing formats, the choice between a framed print and canvas matters more here than with the Elegies, and it is covered in detail elsewhere framed print or canvas. A canvas edition of a quiet composition can sit frameless on a bedroom wall, the way a piece like a canvas landscape edition does canvas editions.

Hanging One Print in a Tight Room

Small bedrooms punish decoration that tries too hard. The usual mistake is buying two or three small Motherwell prints and hanging them as a cluster. His compositions are built on negative space, and crowding them destroys the thing that makes them work. One print, hung with clear wall around it, does more than a group. Above a headboard, above a dresser, or on the wall opposite the door. Anywhere else it competes with the room.

Size discipline matters more than subject. Keep the print's width to roughly two thirds of the furniture it hangs over, and keep its center at eye level when seated, which in a bedroom means lower than in a hallway. A print of 50 cm on its long side is usually right. Anything above 70 cm starts to feel like an office. If your taste runs toward quieter figurative work instead, a still life canvas edition behaves differently but fills a similar footprint a small still life canvas. The goal is the same either way. One image, given room to breathe, in a room that has little to spare.