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View at the museum ↗Untitled (Purple, White, and Red)
Mark Rothko1953
- Attribution
- Mark Rothko (Marcus Rothkowitz) American, born Russia (Latvia), 1903–1970
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Physical dimensions
- Unframed: 197.5 × 207.7 cm (77 13/16 × 81 13/16 in.); 197.5 × 207.7 cm (77 3/4 × 81 3/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of Sigmund E. Edelstone
Museum metadata is available under CC0. Image availability and rights are separate; consult the source record.
Source rights statement: © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
View the museum record ↗From the museum
Untitled (Purple, White, and Red) follows the characteristic format of Mark Rothko’s mature work, in which stacked rectangles of color appear to float within the boundaries of the canvas. By directly staining the canvas with many thin washes of pigment and paying particular attention to the edges where the fields interact, he achieved the effect of light radiating from the image itself. This technique suited Rothko’s metaphysical aims: to offer painting as a doorway into purely spiritual realms, making it as immaterial and evocative as music, and to directly communicate the most essential, raw forms of human emotion.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0