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Lot Essay
In a discussion about Mark Rothko's 'Multiforms," Diane Waldman observes:
"In a painful, often tortuous process of transformation, Rothko purified his painting by purging it of many of the European Models he admired and learned from. He now expressed the metaphysical meaning of his Surrealist works without any recourse to the forms, symbols or allusions of his earlier canvases. References to external world are subsumed into disembodied color, as Rothko attains a synthesis of the physical and spiritual. In this respect, it is interesting to note Rothko's admiration for the Italian Primitives, in particular Fra Angelico, who represented the beauty of both spiritual and physical worlds in their religious paintings. That Rothko was able to achieve this synthesis with the rigorously limited means he allowed himself is all the more remarkable. In these pure, reduced, transcendent works, Rothko makes the concrete sublime" (D. Waldman, Mark Rothko: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, 1978, p. 59).
"In a painful, often tortuous process of transformation, Rothko purified his painting by purging it of many of the European Models he admired and learned from. He now expressed the metaphysical meaning of his Surrealist works without any recourse to the forms, symbols or allusions of his earlier canvases. References to external world are subsumed into disembodied color, as Rothko attains a synthesis of the physical and spiritual. In this respect, it is interesting to note Rothko's admiration for the Italian Primitives, in particular Fra Angelico, who represented the beauty of both spiritual and physical worlds in their religious paintings. That Rothko was able to achieve this synthesis with the rigorously limited means he allowed himself is all the more remarkable. In these pure, reduced, transcendent works, Rothko makes the concrete sublime" (D. Waldman, Mark Rothko: A Retrospective, exh. cat., New York, 1978, p. 59).