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Masterpiece by Rothko at Sothebys

Mark Rothko: "White center (Yellow, pink and lavender on rose)"

Mark Rothko: “White center (Yellow, pink and lavender on rose)”

1950

Image courtesy of Sotheby’s

MASTERPIECE BY MARK ROTHKO FROM THE COLLECTION OF DAVID ROCKEFELLER TO BE SOLD MAY 15, 2007

New York, New York – On May 15, 2007, Sotheby’s New York will offer a masterpiece by Mark Rothko, White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), from the collection of David Rockefeller, prominent philanthropist, banker, statesman and patriarch of one of America’s most renowned families. Dating from the pivotal year of 1950, White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) is the first fully-realized painting of Mark Rothko’s mature style – the canvas with which Rothko succeeded in articulating the painterly dialectic that he would maintain throughout the remaining decades of his career. The pristine work, which has never appeared at auction, is estimated to sell for in excess of $40 million (not including buyer’s premium)

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The masterpiece was acquired by David Rockefeller in 1960, at the recommendation of Dorothy Miller, the first chief curator at the Museum of Modern Art. He purchased it from Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson, niece of Miss Lillie P. Bliss, one of the three founders of MoMA in 1929 along with Mrs. Cornelius J. Sullivan and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., through the Sidney Janis Gallery, one of the premier New York dealers of mid-century American and European art. That was the second time that the Sidney Janis Gallery handled the work, having originally sold it to Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson directly from the artist.

In 1985, the painting was included in the exhibition Dorothy C. Miller: With an Eye to American Art at the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton, Massachusetts, as a tribute to the curator. It travelled through the exhibition, Mark Rothko, to the Musée d’Art Modern in Paris, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. from 1998-99.

David Rockefeller said: “This wonderful painting has given me great pleasure for almost fifty years, ever since MoMA’s legendary Chief Curator, Dorothy Miller, told me about it and urged me – if not insisted – that I acquire it. Up until that time, I had preferred figurative paintings and had found it difficult to adjust to the abstract works of the New York School. So, it was with some reluctance and trepidation that my wife Peggy and I added ‘White Center’ to our collection, the first non-figurative work of art we had ever acquired. I am glad we did. Over the years, it became one of my wife’s favorite paintings, and I grew to respect deeply Rothko’s power as an artist and the subtle beauty and intricate balance of this great work. Now I hope another admirer of Abstract Expressionism will derive similar pleasure from it.”

“Rothko’s White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) is one of the artistic monuments of the 20th Century,” said Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s Worldwide Head of Contemporary Art. “Every great artist has one painting with which he is most closely associated, and for Rothko, this is the one. It is one of the most important Rothkos still in private hands and without question is in the pantheon of Abstract Expressionist masterpieces.”

Rothko is universally regarded as one of the preeminent artists of his generation; closely identified with the New York School, his art, like Jackson Pollock’s and Willem de Kooning’s, remains among the most celebrated of the Abstract Expressionist canon. For nearly half a century, Rothko developed an impassioned form of abstract painting; one that transformed painted color into emotive experience. Rothko is acknowledged as the premier colorist of the last half of the 20th century who ultimately influenced generations of artists that followed, including the Minimalists.

In the 1940s, Rothko’s compositions centered on biomorphic, Surrealist forms against striated color fields, but by the late 1940s, his work became increasingly reductive, paying rigorous attention to formal elements such as color, shape, balance, depth and composition. In the transitional works of the late 1940s, Rothko abandoned any suggestion of figuration in favor of small, superimposed rectangular shapes of color, with cloudy edges, several of which floated in multi-level formations against an indeterminate background. But it was not until 1950 with the creation of White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) that Rothko achieved the breakthrough in which his unique talent as a genius of color’s expressive power was at last given form in a masterwork that proclaimed his ultimate achievement to date. The color forms are reduced in number as they expanded in size, almost dwarfing the background colors as they bloomed toward the canvas edge. Vertical bands of color and linear delineations disappear in favor of the vertical tower of forms that we now recognize as quintessentially Rothko.
As if in celebration of this energized dominance of color form, Rothko’s chromatic range took on a new brilliance and power and the scale of his canvas became more monumental with the paintings of the 1950s. As in White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), vivid and lush colors predominate his palette, setting up contrasts and synergies that fairly vibrate within the canvas. The bright sunny yellow reveals hints of the warm velvety red beneath it; the pinky lavender sings against and within the glowing orange and yellow behind it. Meanwhile, the “white center’’ of the title brings life and light to the pulsating colors, contrasting coolly with the warmer hues. Above and below the white center, thin stripes of contrasting blue and black intensify the oscillating color values, creating a palpable sense of evanescence and incandescence unique to Rothko’s art. Bathed in a painterly mist, these indeterminate forms project their hues out of the pictorial space, enveloping the viewer and inviting us to contemplate and emotively respond to the space he has created.

 

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Masterpiece by Rothko at Sothebys