Mark Rothko (1903 – 1970), Untitled. Photo Sotheby's

acrylic on paper mounted on board, 84.5 by 65.6cm.; 33 1/4 by 25 3/4 in. Executed in 1968. Estimation 1,200,000 — 1,800,000 GBP

Provenance: The artist (estate no. 1220.68)
Marlborough Gallery, Inc., New York
Pace Gallery, New York
Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles
Private Collection, Santa Barbara
Sale: Sotheby's, London, Contemporary Art, 22 June 2005, Lot 21
Private Collection, Hong Kong
Private Collection, New York
Sale: Sothebys, New York, Contemporary Art, 9 November 2010, Lot 34
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Created in 1968, Untitled is a magnificent example of Mark Rothko’s mature corpus, in which the artist’s career-long investigation into the potential of colour fields reached a profound apogee. Formed of a tri-partite arrangement of earthy brown pigment bisected by a central segment of velvety blackness, Untitled encourages a sensation of meditative calm through its subtle merging of planes of sombre colour. The unpainted border around the edge of the composition, emphasised by the presence of feathered brushstrokes, enforces the rich tonal depth within each colour field. The overall effect is one of reverential calm and repose: a moving exercise in the contemplative potential of abstract walls of colour. Rothko had been moving towards the deployment of steadily darker hues throughout the 1960s, but 1968 proved to be a turning point in both personal and aesthetic terms. The artist began working on a smaller scale following instructions from his doctors to rest in order to aid recuperation from illness. The result was a superb group of works of which Untitled forms a part: though lacking in his trademark monumentality, these works condense the essence of Rothko’s mature creative praxis into a more concentrated, yet equally powerful, space.

Despite the personal difficulties Rothko experienced during this year, there is a very clear sense of a new beginning in these late works, as witnessed in Untitled. Forced to experiment in smaller dimensions through a self-imposed pared down vocabulary, the use of paper brought new impetus to Rothko’s oeuvre. Working with paper brought forth works that emanated a radiance of hue that resulted from light reflecting off the white paper beneath semi-translucent pigment, an effect that the artist could not achieve directly on his unprimed canvases which tended to absorb rather than reflect light. The present work reveals this tendency in particular towards the edges of the colour fields, where the movement of the brush over the paper surface becomes sketchy in execution, displaying the glowing ground of the paper beneath to impressive effect whilst further stressing the conceptual importance of the edge in Rothko’s work.

Rothko considered black, in particular, to be a crucial member of the chromatic spectrum as opposed to representing an ‘absence’ of colour. Although Rothko had been experimenting with a more sombre palette throughout the 1960s, these works reached their spectacular apex in the last years of his life, following Dominique de Menil’s commission for the Chapel at the University of St. Thomas, Houstan, Texas. One of Rothko’s most significant artistic legacies, the development and execution of the works for the Chapel occupied much of the artist’s final years, with Rothko completing twenty-three panels in total, fourteen of which were finally hung in the Chapel the year after his death in 1971. Rothko was given extensive control over the architectural design of the chapel by his enlightened patrons, and conceived of five large single panels, along with three sizable triptychs, to fill the octagonal space, all in overwhelmingly dark tones of deep reds and blue. The commission encouraged the artist in his change of creative mood and increasing use of dark hues: Rothko’s paintings and works on paper of the late 1960s, including Untitled, have a greater sense of profundity and a powerful emotional depth that had not always existed within his earlier, more colourful, works. Untitled and other similarly hued works from this period - with all extraneous distraction of bright colour and form eliminated - can be viewed, in many respects, as the culmination of the creative discoveries that resulted from the Chapel. The philosophical and aesthetic perfection of Rothko’s late work is summated eloquently by DianeWaldman: “No longer is his art earthbound, sensual, corporeal. He had attained a harmony, an equilibrium, a wholeness, in the Jungian sense, that enabled him to express universal truths in his breakthrough works, fusing the conscious and the unconscious, the finite and the infinite, the equivocal and the unequivocal, the sensuous and the spiritual” (Diane Waldman in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Mark Rothko, 1903-1970: A Retrospective, 1978, p. 69).

Sotheby's. Contemporary Art Evening Auction. London | 12 févr. 2014 - www.sothebys.com