1949: Turning Towards Abstraction

Mark Rothko, No. 21 (1949)

Another change in Rothko’s style, however, occurred in the late 1940s, when Rothko moved even further into abstraction with the development of his so-called “multiform” works (a word which, admittedly, Rothko himself never used). With these paintings, Rothko wished to connect the viewer directly with the painting, and he settled on vast swatches of colour as the most immediate way to elicit a deep emotional response in the viewer. These paintings are easily distinguished by their bands of coloured rectangles which appear to float atop one another, and by their very luminous quality, as we will see in deatil in the next section. 

One of the paintings which inspired Rothko’s move to colour field painting was Henri Matisse’s The Red Studio (1911, below), which went on view at the MoMA in 1948 and of which Rothko said “when you looked at that painting, you became that color, you became totally saturated with it." Rothko’s No. 21 (1949, left), made the same year he first saw the Matisse, recalls several elements of that painting. Both works feature the same dull crimson background, and the dark chalk-like gray-blue underlayer in Rothko’s work suggests details in Matisse’s painting. However, Rothko ignores all representation in his version of the painting, focusing instead on just the colours themselves and the reaction that they invoke in the viewer.