Rothko Retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton

The Fondation Louis Vuitton devotes a flagship retrospective to Mark Rothko bringing together some 115 works from major international institutions and private collections, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the artist’s family, and the Tate in London. The exhibition retraces the artist’s career from his first figurative paintings to the abstraction that defined his later work.

“I became a painter because I wanted to raise painting to the level of poignancy of music and poetry,” Rothko said. From the intimate scenes and urban landscapes that dominated the 1930s, he moved on to works inspired by ancient myths and surrealism, imbued with the tragedy of war. Shortly after, a decisive shift to abstraction led to his multiforms, in which colours play off each other, until they evolved into the levitating bands of colour of his ‘classic’ works in the 1950s. The curators invite us to explore the pictorial space Rothko creates, where no reference to anything else can be detected, where there’s no ‘landscape’ or ‘feature’, only the canvas.

Until April 2

www.fondationlouisvuitton.fr

From France Today Magazine