70 works on display, many of which have never been exhibited in Italy
Until August 23rd, the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi offers the opportunity to view more than 70 works by Mark Rothko—many of which have never been exhibited in Italy. The exhibition, in addition to illustrating the various creative periods of the Latvian-born American artist, highlights his ties to Florence and, in particular, to the harmony of the classical canon, thanks to the exhibition spaces created in the Vestibule of the Laurentian Library, which host two canvases, and the dialogue established with the frescoes of Beato Angelico in the Museo di San Marco, which welcomes five Rothko canvases on the occasion of the museum’s reopening. The artist visited Florence with his wife Mell in 1950 (returning in 1966) and remained fascinated by Angelico’s painting and the soaring architecture of Michelangelo’s library, from which he drew inspiration for the Seagram Murals series, created in the late 1950s.
He would also exhibit Neo-Surrealist works at Peggy Guggenheim's gallery, Art of This Century
In his early works, following his first participation in a 1928 group exhibition at the Opportunity Gallery in New York, a profound attention to the human figure and its psychological and structural implications emerges, with particular references to the Florentine Renaissance and Michelangelo. These convictions also guided him when, in 1935, he became one of the co-founders of the Expressionist collective The Ten, which also included his friend Adolph Gottlieb. Of particular importance for understanding Rothko’s pictorial and poetic evolution is the section dedicated to the so-called Neo-Surrealist works of the mid-1940s, which led him to exhibit at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery in New York. These works anticipated the definitive dissolution of form and the embrace of abstraction, leading to the celebrated Multiforms of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The exhibition also emphasizes Rothko’s refined use of color, guiding the viewer toward a meditative dimension, exemplified by canvases such as No. 3/No. 13 (1949) from the MoMA collection in New York and Untitled (1952–53) from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The exhibition, the result of collaborations with major museums around the world, once again reaffirms Palazzo Strozzi’s established role among the leading international exhibition venues.
