The Big Review: Rothko in Florence ★★★★★

A five-star review in The Art Newspaper praises “Rothko in Florence,” a major exhibition examining how Florence influenced American painter Mark Rothko (1903–70), who visited the city three times in the 1950s and 1960s. Co-curated by Rothko’s son Christopher, the show spans three venues and includes around 70 works, with the main presentation at Palazzo Strozzi drawing loans from institutions such as New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Tate, and the Centre Pompidou. Five paintings are installed in the monastic cells of Florence’s Museo di San Marco alongside Fra Angelico frescoes, and two studies for the Seagram Murals (commissioned in 1958 for New York’s Four Seasons restaurant) are shown in the Michelangelo-designed vestibule of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. The review notes Rothko’s market prominence, citing a work recently offered at Art Basel Paris for $40 million, and argues the Florence-focused installations reveal how Rothko developed a spatial, emotionally immersive language in dialogue with Renaissance art.

Read the full article at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events