Rothko in Florence

Until August 23, Palazzo Strozzi hosts Rothko in Florence, an exhibition dedicated to one of the masters of modern art.
The project is designed to establish a dialogue between Rothko's work and the artistic and architectural heritage of Florence, particularly the Renaissance spaces of Palazzo Strozzi, as well as involving the Museo di San Marco and the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana.
The exhibition will feature over seventy works from private collections and some of the world's most important museums, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Tate in London, and the Centre National d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou in Paris.

The exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi follows a chronological order, documenting the artist's career in ten rooms, from his figurative debut in the 1930s and 1940s to his artistic maturity in the 1950s and 1960s. It was at this point that Rothko developed the works that made him world-famous: abstract paintings made of flat fields of color that vibrate on the canvas.
His early work was figurative, and the artist explored the languages ​​of Expressionism and Surrealism, also creating works on wood panel prepared with gesso, a technique used since the Renaissance and particularly widespread in the Florentine scene.
Rothko then moved on to a neo-Surrealist style, inspired by mythology, embarking on a journey in search of a universal language capable of communicating profoundly with the viewer. The figures gradually began to dissolve, becoming abstract compositions, later called Multiforms, made of forms like irregular fields of color that float on the canvas and which, by the late 1940s, were organized into more orderly compositions.
A decisive moment for the artist was his trip to Europe in 1950, during which he visited Venice, Rome, and Florence. His encounter with Italian art and architecture profoundly influenced his sense of balance and the relationship with space.
Hence the idea of ​​placing Rothko's works in direct dialogue with those of Beato Angelico in the Museo di San Marco and with the architecture of the Laurentian Library, places he himself had visited, creating a sublime union between ancient and modern.

In his mature works, the canvas empties and becomes pure color, charged with spirituality and poetry. Thin layers of pigment are stratified, allowing the color to vibrate and light to emerge from within the canvas.
Rothko's palette shifts from intense reds and yellows to cool, deep greens and blues. Toward the end of his career, we note a further chromatic shift that reflects the artist's health condition, worn down by depression and alcohol and tobacco abuse: the color gives way to the white, black, and gray of the series entitled Black and Grey.
A section of the exhibition is dedicated to some of the most important commissions of Rothko's career, including the Seagram Murals and the Harvard Murals. These projects demonstrate how the relationship between artwork and exhibition space was absolutely crucial for the artist, who worked to transform painting into an immersive spatial experience.
One of the most important projects in this regard was the Rothko Chapel in Houston, built between 1964 and 1967.

Encountering Rothko's work is an experience of color, emotion, and contemplation. The works on display are suspended in time and space, capable of drawing the viewer in and moving them to emotion.