A piece of contemporary culture comes to Rome with Rothko exhibit

By Pauline Horwits
ROME 12 Nov- The first floor of Rome's Palazzo delle Esposizioni filled with visitors on Saturday night. They came to see a vast selection of works by Mark Rothko, one of the greatest artists of the post-war era.

Rothko emerged during the 1940s part of a group regarded “as a new collective voice in American art.” With a career spanning five decades, Rothko created a new structure for abstract painting. 

The Rothko exhibit is important for Rome, marking the re-opening of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni after a five-year renovation project.

The exhibition displays 70 paintings from different periods in Rothko’s career, offering a comprehensis overview of his work.  The exhibit is divided into seven rooms, which go in chronological order of Rothko’s work.

Rothko’s early images focus on smaller paintings done with chalk, which were greatly influenced by
fifteenth-century Italian art, Fra’Angelico in particular. Paintings from his "Multiforms" collection are distinguished by patches of color, rectangular shapes, and a plastic-spatial effect.

Rothko's best-known paintings -- large canvasses from the 1950s -- are displayed throughout the three largest rooms. 

During this era, Rothko also stopped describing the meaning of his work for he felt that “silence is so accurate, and words would only paralyze the viewer’s mind and imagination.”

The exhibition ends with Rothko’s Black on Gray paintings from the 1960s. They suggest his desire to
produce “spiritual space.”

An American woman in her twenties attending the exhibit commented, “it is very hard to
critique and discuss these paintings unless you are a true art lover. They are mostly simple shapes and colors thrown onto a canvas and given a number. They are very beautiful and abstract yet I would not be able to handle such loud colors in my household.”

Check it out for yourself. The exhibit runs through Jan. 8.