Rothko in Florence Show: Last Week to Visit

Until August 23, 2026: ROTHKO IN FLORENCE. Palazzo Strozzi. Open daily 10 am to 8 pm, with extended opening on Thursdays until 11 pm. Admission: €20.  Another section is in the San Marco Museum, where Rothko’s works dialogue with early Renaissance frescoes by Fra Angelico (pictured).  This section is open Tuesday – Sunday 8:30 am – 1:50 pm.  Admission:  €11.

After the hugely successful Beato Angelico exhibition, Palazzo Strozzi is hosting a seemingly very  different style of painting – Mark Rothko’s modernist art. The exhibition contains works from across Rothko’s career, starting with his 1940s neo-surrealist style, tracing the development towards his renowned colourful canvases.

Curated by Christopher Rothko and Elena Geuna, the exhibition contains over 70 works, many of which have never been exhibited in Florence. Whilst the significance of Italy and the Renaissance to Rothko and his work may seem non-apparent, it is exactly this that is challenged by this show. Christopher Rothko and Geuna developed this project around the unique relationship Rothko had with Florence and its Renaissance artists.

Mark Rothko emigrated from Dvinsk, Russia, to Portland, in the U.S., in 1913 at the age of 10. Rothko  attended Yale University for only two years from 1921 to 1923, before moving to New York, where his artistic career really began. Whilst teaching at the Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center he visited a friend at the Arts Student League of New York andwitnessed a sketching class that propelled him  into the artistic sphere.

Upon entering the first room of the exhibition, visitors are transported to the abstract world of Rothko’s early work. Disproportionately shaped figures with triangular heads and soulless seeming eyes, indistinct  symbols and bold colours characterise Rothko’s early pieces. These primitive works explore the human psyche, drawing on Surrealism and Greek mythology to evoke introspection.

The 1936 oil painting titled ‘Interior,’ is powerful example of the artist’s early style. The work depicts a  quiet scene populated by somewhat elongated and stretched figures. The isolated spaces evoke a  psychological distance between figures and the viewer. The composition is structured with flat areas of  strong colours and outlines, giving the figures a static presence. A sense of the unknown pervades the painting, leaving the viewer to speculate what is depicted, who the figures are and what narrative is unfolding. This work hints at Rothko’s later interest in mood and atmosphere, where he uses simplified forms to prompt contemplation.

In 1946, Rothko’s artistic method suddenly transformed into his iconic style of ‘Multiforms,’ with their  loosely assembled zones of luminous colour. Vibrant colours of red and yellow softly painted onto a  canvas are what most think of when they hear Rothko’s name. According to Christopher Rothko, with  these masterpieces, Rothko wanted the spectator to enter a state of emotional introspection, whilst inspiring a sense of transcendence.

The second room of the exhibition introduces visitors to Rothko’s Multiforms, where traces of his neo surrealist work linger. These early compositions are filled with colourful, irregular forms that spread  across the entire canvas, leaving no empty space. Blues, pinks, grey, reds, oranges and black are found within a single work – something not seen as his style evolves.

The rest of the exhibition presents later Multiforms, including the renowned Seagram Murals, originally  commissioned for the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building of New York City. These works  feature a dark palette of maroons, dark reds, browns, and blacks creating an immersive and overwhelming  sense of darkness that conveys simultaneous emotions of tragedy, doom and ecstasy.

Rothko’s desire to create an emotive experience in his artwork derived in part from his trips to Italy and  particularly Florence throughout the 1950s and 1960s. It was in the Convent of San Marco where Beato Angelico’s religious frescoes with their spiritual atmosphere and contemplative experience, inspired Rothko to evoke similar feelings in his own art.

Michelangelo’s design of the Medicea Laurenziana Library was a key point of inspiration for Rothko, who  claimed ‘He achieved just the kind of feeling I’m after – he makes the viewers feel that they are trapped in  a room where all the doors and windows are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall.’

It is not the style which connects Beato Angelico, Michelangelo and Rothko, but the spiritual exploration  of the self that is elicited by their paintings. Palazzo Strozzi’s exhibition aims to expose visitors to the deep interconnections between the great American modernist artist and the masters of the Renaissance.  (Aniela Cabut)