1948, Mark Rothko, No. 1 (Untitled) -- Museum of Modern Art (New York)
From the museum label: This painting signals a shift in Rothko's practice - from working in a Surrealist mode, inspired by encounters with European artists displaced during World War II, to focusing on the relationship between space, color, and scale in abstract paintings that later became known as Multiforms. Here, Rothko applied thin washes of paint to canvas to create irregular forms that ebb and flow across the picture plane. Its large size and abstract style foreshadowed the artist's signature Color Field paintings (also on view here), which he began making a year after completing this work.
1948, Mark Rothko, No. 1 (Untitled) -- Museum of Modern Art (New York)
From the museum label: This painting signals a shift in Rothko's practice - from working in a Surrealist mode, inspired by encounters with European artists displaced during World War II, to focusing on the relationship between space, color, and scale in abstract paintings that later became known as Multiforms. Here, Rothko applied thin washes of paint to canvas to create irregular forms that ebb and flow across the picture plane. Its large size and abstract style foreshadowed the artist's signature Color Field paintings (also on view here), which he began making a year after completing this work.