With its collection of feather-edged, hazily geometric forms, Rothko’s No. 5/No. 24 sits midway between his early Surrealist compositions and the abstract arrangements of blocks of color floating on colored grounds that would define his style for the rest of his career. This series of works is often labeled Multiform because of the loosely assembled zones of color that structure the compositions. Here, Rothko abandoned forms that resemble the human body or natural elements, foregrounding color and space within the painting. The artist used small brushes to fan the edges of his forms outward so that they become commingled with their neighbors and the field on which they lightly sit. By varying their size, shape, color, and opacity, he creates visual complexity through a refined exploration of a narrow set of painterly qualities.
In The Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting online course, Coursera, 2017
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Mark Rothko
American, born Russia (now Latvia). 1903–1970 19 works onlineMark Rothko sought to make paintings that would bring people to tears.If you…are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point.
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Stain
Paint thinned with solvent and applied to the canvas like a wash. Rather than remaining on the surface, a stain is absorbed into the canvas.
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Mark Rothko
Gallery 403Like many of his fellow Abstract Expressionist artists, Rothko, in response to unthinkable atrocities—the Holocaust, the vast casualties on the battlefields of World War II, the atomic bomb—believed in the power of abstract art to reassert the highest ideals of humankind.
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