tragedy, ecstasy, doom

Rothko, Untitled (Brown and Gray) (1969)

Mark Rothko, Untitled (Brown and Gray) (1969)

Rothko attempted, through his works, to connect with the viewer emotionally and spiriually.

Although the works shown on the previous page run the range of emotions, from almost joyous yellows and whites and reds to more moody blues and browns, in the later years of his life Rothko mainly focused on painting large, dark, and gloomy canvasses, mainly utilizing browns, dark grays, and blacks.

These pieces appear to have lost the light and translucent floating quality of his earlier works due to their heavier layers of paints and darker palettes. 

The surrounding pieces are all from the period 1967-69, the year before Rothko commited suicide. 

Rothko by the time of his death had become one of the major figures in the Abstract Expressionist movement, although unlike his contemporaries Pollock and de Kooning he was less interested in the process of painting itself or the material and paints involved in that process; instead, he was more focused on the viewer’s emotional response to his art.