Untitled (brown and gray)

Mark Rothko was a well-known American painter who was raised in a Jewish family and immigrated to the United States from Latvia (then part of Russia) at just ten years old. He was associated with an experimental art scene that emerged after WWII based in New York City, later known as the New York School. It fostered the Abstract Expressionist movement in the mid-20th century whose exponents, including Rothko, created gestural abstract works often predicated on spontaneous actions. For the majority of his career, he lived and worked in New York alongside artists and friends, creating large oil paintings on canvas.

Intermittently throughout his career, Rothko created oil paintings on paper that were often smaller than his works on canvas, though – like this one, which is about six feet in height – were still imposing. This practice dominated his oeuvre in the late 1960s when he was limited by physical illness and struggled with depression. The paintings made during this time often employed a dark color palette, using many layers to give the colors a depth incongruous to the flat surface of paper. Untitled (brown and gray) pairs a deep brown with dark gray, the paint coming alive through visible brushstrokes and varying translucency. Rothko believed in the power of painting and color to move the human spirit and resisted formal explanations of his work.