Many associate the name Mark Rothko with large-scale color field paintings, usually with soft-edged rectangles. Rothko was looking for ways to depict human emotion pictorially − and he succeeded: there are numerous accounts of museum and gallery visitors who were deeply moved by Rothko's paintings. But the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has other things in mind with its latest exhibition, Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper. It spotlights a selection of nearly 1,000 small-format paintings on paper by the artist. Many of the more than 100 exhibits are on public display for the first time ever. Visitors will have this opportunity from November 19, 2023 to March 31, 2024.
Before Mark Rothko (1903-1970) became famous as a painter, he worked in several part-time jobs. One of them was as a teacher of art classes for children, which he gave twice a week at the Brooklyn Jewish Center from 1929 to 1946. He used the same materials as his students, painting paper constructions, for example, that were actually intended for children to color. Several of these works are presented at the very beginning of the exhibition. The curators thus pretend that this Rothko exhibition will be different from what the public is used to.
