Rothko

Exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, 18 October 2023 - 2 April 2024

"I became a painter because I wanted to raise painting to the same level of intensity as music and poetry". (Mark Rothko)

Mark Rothko (1903-1970) began painting in the early 1930s, shortly after moving to the United States. After early figurative works influenced by ancient mythology and surrealism, the artist made a decisive shift towards abstraction from 1946 onwards, and his painting rapidly evolved into the so-called classical works of the 1950s, with their saturated colours and floating, expansive forms.

This catalogue, the first Rothko retrospective in France since 1999, presents 115 works from major institutional collections - the National Gallery of Art and the Phillips Collection in Washington, Tate in London - and private collections, including that of the artist's family. The book traces the artist's career chronologically, from his first figurative paintings to the abstraction that defines his work today.