Rothko in Florence

Exploring the abstractionist giant's decades-long creative rapport with the artists of Renaissance-era Florence

Published with Palazzo Strozzi.

This volume examines, for the first time, the American painter Mark Rothko's profound rapport with the city of Florence, following a route that starts in the rooms of Palazzo Strozzi and progresses toward two iconic locations, the Museo di San Marco, home to the frescoes of Fra Angelico, and the vestibule of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, designed by Michelangelo.Rothko's first encounter with Florence was in 1950, when he visited Italy with his wife, Mell. The trip marked the beginning of his fascination with the city's groundbreaking artists of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. Through an ample selection of works dating from the 1930s to 1970, Rothko in Florence explores Rothko's enchantment with the Renaissance, and in particular with the artists Giotto and Fra Angelico, while simultaneously tracing the course of his broader artistic, spiritual and cultural legacy. An exhaustive chronology, lavishly illustrated with images from the family archives, the volume unspools an underexplored facet of the great abstract artist's practice.Mark Rothko (1903-70) was born in imperial Russia and immigrated to the United States as a child. He studied at Yale University and became an instructor at the Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center. In the 1930s Rothko exhibited alongside his fellow members of the Ten, which included Louis Harris, Adolph Gottlieb and Joseph Solman. It was not until 1947 that his now-signature style-monochrome or multicolored rectangles against a solid background-began to coalesce.