Mark Rothko

Marlborough Galleria d'Arte, Rome
Marlborough Galerie AG, Zürich
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1972

Rome, Marlborough Galleria d'Arte, Mark Rothko, 1968, no. 4
Turin, Galleria Martano, Mark Rothko, 1971, no. 14
Bergamo, Galleria Lorenzelli, Mark Rothko, 1971, no. 4

The year 1968 marked a crucial watershed in Mark Rothko’s life and thus resulted in a new working process in his artistic career. In the spring, Rothko suffered a serious heart attack, a condition which was also worsened by heavy drinking and a deteriorating marriage, which forced him to be hospitalised for three weeks. After this traumatic experience, the doctors recommended that he cease painting in order to conserve his powers. Rothko though was permitted to work on small-format sheets of paper and in the summer resumed work, renting a house in Provincetown, Cape Cod. He had worked on paper earlier on in his artistic career; both in the 1940’s and later on in the late 1950’s, when he executed small-scale paper versions of his oil on canvas pieces. An assistant would roll out a length of paper on the floor for him and Rothko would decide what sort of size he wanted. A series of ten or fifteen sheets would be cut to approximately the same dimensions and tacked all in a row onto a plywood easel in his studio, where he would work on one at a time. However what is significant is that in 1968, Rothko chose to work in acrylic rather than watercolour or oil that he had previously employed in his works in the past. He was attracted to the fast drying qualities of this medium and was also able to use water with acrylic, which allowed him to achieve the fusion and density of colour he desired. Spreading and soaking the surface of his works with wide brushes and sponges, these new acrylics epitomised simplicity both through the colours used and the moods that they evoked. The hues were deeper and quieter than the dazzling colours of his earlier works and the rectangular colour fields, which formerly floated in the composition, were now denser and more stable, because of the opaque and translucent quality of the medium. Towards the end of 1968, Rothko decided to mount these works onto canvas as a result of his concern of the fragility of the paper and its heavily colour saturated surface.

Untitled (Green on Blue) executed in this year, is an exquisite example of this late body of work in Rothko’s remarkable and prolific artistic career. A sublime elongated composition, Untitled (Green on Blue), entices the viewer towards a series of varying hues of blue that range from a deep midnight, to a more sombre grey, to a rich royal blue and an electric turquoise. These areas of vivid and evocative colour, hover like clouds with hazily brushed contours spreading almost to the extreme edges of the canvas which allows the colours to flow in and out of the picture ground with varying intensity. The darker blue section with its radiating turquoise halo dominates almost three-quarters of Untitled (Green on Blue). It serves to weight the composition and yet coaxes the viewer in as their eye is drawn downwards towards the deep purple horizon before it plunges into the infinite royal blue expanse in the bottom of the picture plane. Translucent and incandescent as a whole, these colour fields in Untitled (Green on Blue) act as veils, the colour seeping, radiating and shimmering through the different layers, encouraging a contemplative and reflective mood in the viewer’s mind. Void of any direct narrative or representational content, Rothko in Untitled (Green on Blue) successfully replaces this with the interaction between the picture surface and the viewer. The subtle tonal variations serve to break any kind of monochromatic effect and instead charge the space with intense emotion, creating an all embracing meditative, ethereal and highly personal experience.