Mark Rothko's Works on Paper - Exhibition and Catalogue Raisonné

National Gallery of Art, 

November 19, 2023–March 31, 2024

The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Norway

May 16–September 22, 2024

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1959, Oil on paper, private collection, © 2023 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

The National Gallery of Art, the largest public repository of works by Mark Rothko, announced today a major exhibition of the artist’s paintings on paper. On view in the National Gallery’s East Building from November 19, 2023, through March 31, 2024, the exhibition will examine some 100 paintings on paper that the artist viewed as finished works in their own right, rather than sketches or preliminary studies intended for his own eyes. By considering Rothko’s work on paper, which is largely unfamiliar to art specialists and the public alike, the exhibition offers a new view of the development of the artist’s oeuvre. Made throughout Rothko’s career, the works in the exhibition range from early watercolors of figurative subjects and mythological and surrealist works to oil and acrylic paintings in the artist’s signature format of soft-edged rectangular fields arranged against monochrome backgrounds. Many of the latter are monumental in scale, measuring up to seven feet tall. The exhibition will travel to the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Norway in 2024, where it will be the first major exhibition of the artist’s work held in Scandinavia.

The exhibition comes as the National Gallery approaches the culmination of a decades-long process of cataloging all of Mark Rothko’s works on paper for a forthcoming catalogue raisonné that will be available as both an online resource and print publication. In February 2019, the National Gallery launched the online resource at rothko.nga.gov. As of February 2022, the resource allows users to browse, filter, sort, and compare 1,903 of the approximately 2,600 works on paper by Rothko held in public and private collections worldwide. Additional content being developed in association with this initiative includes an overarching study of Rothko’s work on paper by the lead author of the catalogue raisonné—Adam Greenhalgh, associate curator at the National Gallery—as well as a robust chronology, a biographical memoir by the artist’s daughter, Kate Rothko Prizel, and studies of Rothko’s materials and process by National Gallery conservators. The online resource and print publication will be the definitive scholarly references for Rothko’s works on paper. The National Gallery continues to seek information about drawings and paintings on paper to be considered for inclusion in the catalogue raisonné. Those with information can contact rothko@nga.gov or 202.842.6779. The catalogue raisonné of works on paper follows the award-winning catalogue raisonné Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas by David Anfam, published in 1998 by the National Gallery and Yale University Press.

“The National Gallery is privileged to hold the largest public collection of works by Mark Rothko, thanks to the Mark Rothko Foundation’s transformative 1986 gift. We are committed to the continued study of the artist’s work and to providing accessible resources through which the public can learn more about this renowned artist,” said Kaywin Feldman, director, National Gallery of Art. “Together with the catalogue raisonné of Rothko’s works on paper, this exhibition of the artist’s paintings on paper will add a new dimension to our understanding of his practice and output.”

Exhibition Organization and Curators

The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art.

The exhibition is curated by Adam Greenhalgh, associate curator, National Gallery of Art.

Exhibition Overview

Paintings are often understood to be on canvas and drawings on paper. For Mark Rothko, paintings were paintings, regardless of whether he applied his paint to canvas or paper. Little known to general and scholarly audiences alike, Rothko’s paintings on paper challenge expectations about what “counts” as painting, the hierarchy of media, and popular conceptions of the artist as primarily a painter of monumental abstract canvases. This exhibition includes 100 of the finest of these paintings on paper—works that Rothko considered on par with his works on canvas.

While Rothko made many studies and sketches on paper in graphite, ink, or even watercolor, he also created more than 1,100 paintings on paper. Some of these Rothko considered to be worthy of display or sale, as we know from the history of exhibitions during his life as well as an inventory of work in his possession that he completed shortly before his death.

The exhibition will contextualize Rothko’s relationship with paper by focusing on four key periods when his engagement with it was particularly fruitful: the 1930s, 1944 to 1949, 1958 to 1959, and 1967 to 1969. Organized around these crucial moments, the exhibition explores how painting on paper affected the trajectory of Rothko’s oeuvre. These moments reveal, for instance, how the early figural works presaged his later abstractions; how the stratified compositions and luminous washes of mid-1940s watercolors anticipated the diaphanous effects of his best-known canvases of the 1950s and 1960s; and how vibrant paintings on paper made in the final years of his life complicate long-standing associations between his canvases’ darkening palette and his physical and mental health. The works included in the exhibition draw from the National Gallery’s robust holdings as well as those of other museums and private collections.

Mark Rothko and the National Gallery
In 1986 the Mark Rothko Foundation determined that its mission to conserve its collection of Rothko’s art and to enhance and promote Rothko’s legacy through scholarly research and exhibitions would best be served by strategically placing his canvases and works on paper in major museums internationally. The foundation designated 35 institutions to receive the art, among them the Art Institute of Chicago; the Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA; the Menil Collection, Houston, TX; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and the Tate, London. As the principal recipient of the Mark Rothko Foundation’s gift, the National Gallery received more than 1,100 works—paintings on canvas and panel and works on paper—as well as research materials, including conservation records and exhibition reviews. In 2007, Rothko’s children, Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko, further enhanced the National Gallery’s holdings by donating to its library the manuscript for their father’s book, The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art, which was edited by Christopher Rothko and published in 2004 by Yale University Press.

The National Gallery has presented the works of Mark Rothko in several special installations and exhibitions. In 1984, Mark Rothko: Works on Paper 1925-1970, organized by the Mark Rothko Foundation and circulated by the American Federation of Arts, opened at the National Gallery and traveled throughout the United States. In 1998, Jeffrey Weiss, then a National Gallery curator of modern and contemporary art, organized the retrospective Mark Rothko. The 2003–2007 installation Rothko’s Mural Commissions marked the centennial of Rothko’s birth. In 2010–2011, In the Tower: Mark Rothko presented seven of Rothko’s black-on-black paintings from 1964 and nine earlier works, while in 2011–2012, an installation featured three paintings derived from Rothko’s Seagram Murals project.

Additionally, since receiving the gift from the Mark Rothko Foundation in 1986, the National Gallery’s National Lending Service has lent more than 240 works by Rothko to more than 200 museums, galleries, and embassies worldwide.

When the National Gallery’s East Building reopened in 2016 following renovations, it added a new gallery that became the museum’s first space dedicated to the work of Mark Rothko. Since then, the skylit space on the Tower Level has consistently featured a rotating selection of paintings from the National Gallery’s collection and become a beloved destination of visitors to the museum.

Exhibition Catalog

Coinciding with the exhibition, a fully illustrated catalog will be published. It will include an essay by Adam Greenhalgh, associate curator, National Gallery of Art, and the lead author of the catalogue raisonné of Mark Rothko’s works on paper. With more than 125 illustrations, the book will trace the arc of Rothko’s career through the lens of his repeated engagement with paper to reveal how these works figured in his reception, reputation, and success.

Related Catalogue

Mark Rothko: Works on Paper - December 20, 2008

by Bonnie Clearwater  (Author), Dore Ashton (Introduction)

4.4 out of 5 stars    12 ratings

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―Includes 86 drawings and sketches reproduced in full color dating from the late 1920s through 1969 ―Two gatefolds nearly three feet wide make it possible to view studies of Rothko's work,many of them reproduced in their actual sizes Mark Rothko, a monumental figure in twentieth-century American art and a founder of Abstract Expressionism, is universally known for his huge paintings depicting floating rectangles of glowing colors. Less well known are his works on paper: he held onto most of these, and they were unavailable and largely unknown during his lifetime and during the long years of litigation that followed his death. Now the finest of them can at last be seen. Mark Rothko: Works on Paper presents the intimate legacy of a giant of modern art. As author Bonnie Clearwater writes,With the symmetry, tidy execution, and minimal gesture, the small works on paper often seem to be more quintessential Rothko than many of his canvases. They should be appreciated for their subtlety, their directness, and what they disclose about the artists aesthetic.

Catalogue Raisonné of Mark Rothko's Works on Paper in Progress

Mark Rothko, American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled, 1969
acrylic on paper
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

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Online Resource Launched at rothko.nga.gov; Print Publication to Follow

Washington, DC—The National Gallery of Art maintains the largest public collection of art by the American artist Mark Rothko (1903–1970). Following the publication in 1998 of its landmark catalogue raisonné of Rothko's works on canvas, the National Gallery embarked on research into Rothko's works on paper. The culmination of this decades-long process of cataloging will be an online resource compiling the drawings and paintings on paper. In February 2019, the National Gallery launched the online resource at rothko.nga.gov with 900 works, all in the collection of the National Gallery. As of February 2022, the resource has grown to include 1,903 works, having incorporated works in the collections of the Rothko family. Works in other public and private collections will continue to be added through 2023. A print publication of the catalogue raisonné will follow.

Mark Rothko: The Works on Paper will document and illustrate some 2,600 works by Rothko located in public and private collections worldwide. Demonstrating the range of the artist's creative achievements, the online and print publications will be the definitive scholarly references for Rothko's works on paper, a body of work largely unknown to art specialists and the public alike. The National Gallery continues to seek information about drawings and paintings on paper to be considered for inclusion in the catalogue raisonné. Those with information can contact rothko@nga.gov or 202.842.6779. All information associated with the ownership of works of art documented in the catalogue raisonné is held in confidence by the National Gallery, and all wishes for anonymity will be fully respected.

Mark Rothko: The Works on Paper follows the award-winning catalogue raisonné Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas by David Anfam, published in 1998 by the National Gallery of Art and Yale University Press, which documented 834 known paintings.

Rothko's Works on Paper

During the 1920s and 1930s Rothko produced more than 1,500 figurative works in watercolor, ink, and graphite on loose sheets of paper and in sketchbooks. These include landscapes of various locations, most prominently Portland, OR, where he immigrated in 1913 from Dvinsk, Russia (now Daugavpils, Latvia), and places where he frequently summered, such as Lake George, NY, and Cape Ann, MA. From 1924, when Rothko settled in New York City, the geometries of the metropolis feature in urban views and subway scenes. Throughout this early phase of his career, Rothko also produced dozens of nude studies, intimate domestic scenes, and portraits of family and friends. Very few of these early works have ever been reproduced.

In the 1940s Rothko's work entered an experimental phase as he explored a range of styles rooted in expressionism, symbolism, and surrealism and used subject matter drawn from mythological, classical, biblical, ethnographic, scientific, and other sources. At mid-decade, he produced a remarkable body of luminous surrealist watercolors featuring biomorphic shapes; the fluidity of these works was integral to Rothko's transition toward complete abstraction.

Between 1947 and 1949 Rothko's works, which later came to be known as multiforms, eschewed figural associations and were marked by asymmetrically arranged patches of color hovering within a chromatic field. The artist would eventually develop the multiforms into his signature style: soft-edged rectangles set against a ground of uniform color in a vertical format.

Rothko worked on paper throughout the 1950s and 1960s, often mounting paintings executed in acrylic, oil, watercolor, or some combination thereof on hardboard panels or stretched canvases. In the final two years of his life Rothko made nearly 350 paintings on paper, compared to just 25 on canvas. This late turn to paper is usually explained with reference to his health problems, but this is belied by the fact that some of these works are as big as 84 by 59 inches, easily the size of his larger canvases.

The Authors and Advisors

The catalogue raisonné is being compiled and written by Adam Greenhalgh, associate curator, National Gallery; Laili Nasr, project coordinator and contributing author, who has been involved with the Rothko catalogue raisonné project at the National Gallery since its inception; and Michaela Milgrom, research assistant, with guidance from an advisory committee.

Mark Rothko and the National Gallery

In 1986 the Mark Rothko Foundation determined that its mission to conserve its collection of Rothko's art and to enhance and promote Rothko's legacy through scholarly research and exhibitions would best be served by strategically placing his canvases and works on paper in major museums internationally. The foundation designated 35 institutions to receive the art, among them the Art Institute of Chicago; the Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA; the Menil Collection, Houston, TX; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and the Tate, London. As the principal recipient of the Mark Rothko Foundation's gift, the National Gallery received more than 1,100 works—paintings on canvas and panel and works on paper—as well as research materials, including conservation records and exhibition reviews.

In 2007, Rothko's children, Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko, further enhanced the National Gallery's holdings by donating to its library the manuscript for their father's book, The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art, which was edited by Christopher Rothko and published in 2004 by Yale University Press.

The National Gallery has presented the works of Mark Rothko in several special installations and exhibitions. In 1984, Mark Rothko: Works on Paper 1925-1970, organized by the Mark Rothko Foundation and circulated by the American Federation of Arts, opened at the National Gallery and traveled throughout the United States. In 1998, Jeffrey Weiss, then a National Gallery curator of modern and contemporary art, organized the retrospective Mark Rothko. The 2003–2007 installation Rothko’s Mural Commissions marked the centennial of Rothko’s birth. In 2010–2011, In the Tower: Mark Rothko presented seven of Rothko’s black-on-black paintings from 1964 and nine earlier works, while in 2011–2012, an installation featured three paintings derived from Rothko’s Seagram Murals project.

Additionally, since receiving the gift from the Mark Rothko Foundation in 1986, the National Gallery's National Lending Service has lent more than 240 works by Rothko to more than 200 museums, galleries, and embassies worldwide.

When the National Gallery's East Building reopened in 2016 following renovations, it added a new gallery that became the museum's first space dedicated to the work of Mark Rothko. Since then, the skylit space on the Tower Level has consistently featured a rotating selection of paintings from the National Gallery's collection and become a beloved destination of visitors to the museum.

Catalogue Raisonné Scholarship at the National Gallery

The Rothko catalogues raisonnés join similar scholarly projects undertaken by the National Gallery, including The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein: A Catalogue Raisonné, by Mary Lee Corlett with Ruth Fine (1994; 2nd ed., 2002); Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, by Barbara Buhler Lynes (1999; in collaboration with the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation); Gemini G.E.L., one of the first online catalogues raisonnés, compiled by Charles Ritchie, Claude L. Elliott, and Jonathan F. Walz, under the direction of Ruth Fine and Judith Brodie (2001); and Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set, by Sarah Greenough (2002; Online Edition, 2019).