The Bernard Jacobsen Gallery on Cork Street in London reports brisk Frieze week business from European and British customers for their show of drawings by Robert Motherwell.

In the first three days of Robert Motherwell: Works on Paper, the first ever exhibition dedicated to drawings and paintings on paper by the artist to be held in Britain, 49 works from the Lyric Suite alone were sold.

The exhibition, which is taking place twenty years after the artist’s death, comprises some 90 works with prices ranging from $10,000 to $300,000.  At the centre of the show are 60 drawings from the 565 that make up the Lyric Suite.  These were created in April and May 1965, a reinvestigation of first principles amidst the hubbub surrounding the build-up to Motherwell’s first major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art New York that autumn.  The rest of the works on view span his career, the last dated 1990, the year before his death at the age of 76.