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, which he began making a year after completing this work.
Gallery label from 2023
Eliminating the figures and organic imagery that dominate earlier paintings, in the late 1940s Rothko began to focus on the relationship between space, color, and scale in paintings that later became known as Multiforms. In this work Rothko applied thin washes of paint to canvas to create a multitude of irregular forms that ebb and flow across the picture plane. Its large size and abstract style point toward the artist’s signature Color Field paintings, which he began a year after completing this work.
Gallery label from Abstract Expressionist New York, October 3, 2010-April 25, 2011
