Approximately 40 paintings by Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) are on display in this retrospective, the first on the artist in more than a quarter century. Regarded as the intellectual among the Abstract Expressionists, Motherwell coined the phrase “New York School” in 1949, his way of describing the group that shaped postwar American art. “Pure Painting” presents Motherwell’s most important artistic cycles, such as the “Elegies” he began creating in 1948, in response to the brutality of the Spanish Civil War. A second series, “Opens,” which he began in 1967, includes more than 200 works that evoke emotion in a measured, systematic manner. In answer to the question of how good a painter Motherwell was, The Wall Street Journal wrote “very, very good, often great.” —Jeanne Malle