Mark Rothko (1903 – 1970) – modern painter extraordinaire
Here is a sample of Mark Rothko’s paintings published by the National Gallery, UK in a 2015 calendar. Some would say that Rothko’s paintings are too simplistic and anyone could create them.
While working at Christies the Art Auction House an art expert said to me, a painting is beautiful not because …of the exquisite execution of the painting by the artist, but by the emotions it evokes in the beholder of the art. Rothko’s extraordinary achievement was the communication of tragedy and elation through forms reduced to their starkest simplicity – often times a pair of rectangles. At a Rothko exhibition in the Tate Modern, London I could definitely feel the difference between his earlier brighter paintings and his later darker ones. They had a whole room of his later paintings but it felt heavy and depressing. I did not want to linger in the room.
So saying, I would recommend you visit a Rothko exhibition if you ever get the chance and experience for yourself the varying emotions his pictures can evoke. the National Gallery has some 300 paintings on canvas and paper.