Motherwell's interest in the Mexican poet Octavio Paz was stimulated by Dore Ashton, who had known Paz since 1959 and introduced him to Motherwell in the early 1970s. An assiduous reader of Ashton's writing, Paz first encountered the quotation by Motherwell that would become the title and leitmotif of the poem dedicated to Motherwell's art in a text by Ashton. Ashton later made one of the first translations of the poem into English for Motherwell.
In 1981, Motherwell painted Face of the Night (for Octavio Paz). A large horizontal canvas measuring 72 x 180 in. (1829 x 4572 mm.), it was exhibited for the first time in Motherwell's 1983 retrospective organized by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Paz saw the painting when the exhibition came to the Guggenheim Museum in New York in the winter of 1983-1984, and conversations began about collaboration on a book combining Motherwell's imagery and Paz's poetry. By 1985, the project was well underway. Motherwell and Paz initially intended to combine several poems by Paz (perhaps twelve, including the one dedicated to Motherwell) with numerous reproductions of Motherwell's work incorporating Mexican themes. Some of the initial selections from Motherwell's work included Recuerdo de Coyoacan; Maria; Panco Villa, Dead and Alive; Three Persons Shot; Te Quiero; and Face of the Night (for Octavio Paz). Because Paz's poem to Motherwell referred to several repeated motifs in the artist's work, Chi Ama Crede, Mallarme's Swan, and selections from the Je t'aime and the Elegy to the Spanish Republic series were also considered for inclusion. At this time, Motherwell proposed printing Face of the Night (for Octavio Paz) on cloth and using it as a binding illustration wrapped around the boards with Sidney and Benjamin Shiff of the Limited Editions Club, New York, who had contacted Motherwell about doing a book and knew Paz. (It was during this time that Motherwell made the acquaintance of Andrew Hoyem, whose Arion Press in San Francisco would later publish Ulysses (see lot 38.)
The artists ultimately chose to emphasize the triangular nature of the book, with three poems and all new imagery, which in its multicolored hues and abrupt transitions, stands in contest to the movement and pulse of the verse. The poetry is paired with the images to emphasize how the poetic narrative shifts sideways and forward through the book's three partitions. The three-part structure of the book was elaborated into a trinity of formats that employed the talents of many collaborators. Maurice Sanchez of Derriere L'Etoile workshop transferred the first eight images in the book onto aluminum plates. These were paired with the first poem, "San Ildefonso Nocturne," which refers to the town where Paz attended school, received his bachelor's degree, and saw Diego Rivera's frescoes. The eight images selected to illustrate this poem are from a series of black tusche drawings Motherwell began in 1967 that were originally intended as illuminations for a two-part edition of Rimbaud's A Season in Hell. This limited-edition book, which was initiated and organized by Bill Berkson at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, was to have nine segments and twenty to twenty-five illustrations in all. When the project was indefinitely postponed and ultimately canceled, Motherwell, decided to put the drawings away for use in a future project. The book's second poem, "Return," brings the theme of return or recurrence into the book. Written when Paz returned to Mexico City in 1965, it addresses an essential element of both artists' work and describes a path that ceaselessly returns to its point of departure only to depart once more and return again. Some of the Mexico City Personages used as illustrations of this poem were also worked on by Sanchez. The third and final poem, "The Skin of the World, The Sound of the World; Robert Motherwell," looks at Motherwell's work through the medium of poetry.
The main platework and edition printing of the books and portfolios was done by Bruce Porter of Trestle Editions Limited. When the images were proofed and printed, they were brought to Motherwell's Greenwich, Connecticut, studio for examination and signing. Motherwell progressively refined these new images over the course of numerous sessions, and the prints were gradually collated into the final portfolio formats.