An Abstract Expressionist returns to Vienna

The artist Robert Motherwell was a bridge between continents: at once a spokesman for the New York School and a conduit for the theories of European modernists. And yet, there had not been a retrospective of his work in Europe since 1998; in Austria, the last major Motherwell exhibit took place in the 1970s. That changed with “Robert Motherwell — Pure Painting,” a retrospective at the Kunstforum in Vienna. The show — as the title indicates — focuses exclusively on his paintings, featuring loans from private collections and museums from across the United States and Europe. “Pure Painting” spans half a century, beginning with figurative abstractions of the 1940s and extending into representative works of his last years.