Mark Rothko, 1903-1970, was a Latvian American abstract painter. He is best known for his color field paintings that depicted irregular and painterly rectangular regions of color, which he produced from 1949 to 1970.
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In 1943, Rothko, with his friend the painter Adolph Gottlieb, wrote several philosophical statements that would continue to guide his painting for years to come: “We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.” The scale and surface of this painting reflect these ideas. Rothko abandoned traditional Renaissance three-point perspective, which conceives of the canvas as a window onto another world. Multiple glazes of dark pigments of varying opacity result in a picture surface that seems flat yet quivers and vibrates, offering a sense of atmospheric depth. Rothko hoped that these compositional strategies would invite visual and emotional contemplation, creating the conditions for silence and reflection.
From the Placard: MoMA Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
