Brand Rothko: Untitled 1967

Number 8: Eighth most expensive artwork sold at auctions in 2020.

The picture belongs to the most dramatic paintings of Mark Rothko of late career. Warm, lively auras surrounding the dark void, reflect the artist’s inner demons and the contradictions that tear at him … Magenta and red are life, black abyss is despair and death … Looking at the interpenetrating colors, you can really feel the essence of his paintings. They are created through the complex process of applying layers of paint using different brushes to elicit an emotional response. This masterpiece is one of only four finished paintings, right after the meditation canvases for the Rothko Chapel and just before Black on Gray, his last series.

Worth remembering … the last series is Black on Gray … these are the colors that mark the end … 🙂

Mark Rothko was born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz in Latvia on September 25, 1903, was practically a peer of Barett Newman and, like him, came from an Eastern European Jewish family. This is one more moment in which we wonder what would have happened if the Holocaust had not happened … how the civilization of Polish Jews could translate into the success of contemporary Poland.

Personally, Rothko did not consider himself a representative of any art school, but he is associated with the American movement of abstract expressionism in contemporary art.