Untitled

Until 30 June 2019, in our very favorite Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, you can visit an amazing Mark Rothko exhibition. Among the masterpieces there you can see the one we present today. Enjoy! : )

It was Rothko’s euphoric veils of pure color that led critics to praise him as a sensualist and a colorist, which pained him because he believed that his champions had lost sight of his serious intentions. For him the canvases enacted a violent battle of opposites—vertical versus horizontal, hot color versus cold—invoking the existential conflicts of modernity. His works were about human feelings and drama. The Black Paintings, begun in the year before the artist’s suicide, confirm Rothko’s belief that his work encompassed tragedy. The desolation of canvases such as this one, drained of color and choked by a white border—rather than suggesting the free-floating forms or veiled layers of his earlier work—indicate that, as Rothko asserted, his paintings are about death.

P.S. Early Rothko’s paintings will surprise you. See them at the exhibition in Vienna or read about them here.