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MARK ROTHKO (1903-1970) UNTITLED tempera on paper mounted to canvas 48 x 401/2 in. (121.9 x 102.9...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:800,000.00 - 1,200,000.00 USD
MARK ROTHKO (1903-1970) UNTITLED tempera on paper mounted to canvas 48 x 401/2 in. (121.9 x 102.9...
MARK ROTHKO
(1903-1970)
UNTITLED
tempera on paper
mounted to canvas
48 x 401/2 in. (121.9 x 102.9 cm)
painted in 1969
this work is Estate of the Artist
no. 2018.6
ESTIMATE: $800,000-1,200,000
PROVENANCE
Marlborough Gallery, New York
Dickinson Roundell Inc., New York
Private collection, Switzerland
EXHIBITED
NEW YORK, Dickinson Roundell Inc., 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY WORKS ON PAPER, May-June 2000, pl. 69 (illustrated)
While surrendering little of it's floaty freedom and retaining the feel of watercolor, Rothko's color also seems laden with something: it contains earth as well as air and water and ash. If many color patches are transparent for example, others are opaque, which makes the color more heavy-seeming. The opaque colors often hug the painting's surface, while the more misty ones enfold the eye in the depths of infinite space. When color is superimposed on color, the effect is less of airy intermingling than of concentration, gathering, tightening. Rothko also seems to bring an equal amount of lights and shadow into his color so that the paintings have the sensual seriousness of light passing through stained glass. Or, to change the analogy once again, he does to color what a mute does to a trumpet. There is a radiant darkening, a compression of tone into a register that seems strange and depth-filled.
M. Stevens, "Mark Rothko: into an unknown world,"
THE MULTIFORMS 1947-1948, NEW YORK, 1991, p. 40