Mark Rothko. The Retrospective at Hamburg Kunsthalle on artrepublic.com
Exhibition running from May 16 2008
until Sep 14 2008
The American painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970) is one of the most important representatives of Abstract Expressionism. Twenty years after the last retrospective in a German museum this show at the Hamburger Kunsthalle offers a unique opportunity to discover his outstanding oeuvre anew. The exhibition comprises more than 110 works including more than 70 oil paintings on canvas and more than 40 works on paper. It presents works from all phases of Rothko’s career and allows the immediate experience of their intriguing and mysterious aura which no reproduction is able to capture. More than two thirds of the paintings come from the USA and the majority of these have never before been shown in Germany. Mark Rothko. The Retrospective presents the paintings of the American painter within an unusual context. Two historical precursors mark the poles between which Rothko struggles for his abstract visual language: On one side there is the Romantic European legacy of Caspar David Friedrich. In his landscapes the viewers (their place in the paintings taken over by the figures shown from the back) are drawn into the revelation of a space of personal emotion and reflection very much comparable to Rothko’s paintings. This comparison can be made directly in the exhibition where Rothko’s large intensely colourful abstractions are hanging right next to paintings by Friedrich like the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (c. 1817). On the other side there is painting as practiced by Pierre Bonnard, the famous modern French painter of the Nabis School, whose works are flooded by the sensuous colours and bright light of the Mediterranean and who took part in modernity’s effort to liberate colour from its representational function and to foreground, instead, its presence and radiance within the artwork. The paintings by Bonnard selected for this exhibition clearly show how Mark Rothko, who had seen Bonnard’s pictures in New York, picked up the special quality of Mediterranean painting in his colour field painting. The exhibition closes with a perspective on the traditions relevant for contemporary American art and shows the late Black and Gray paintings which give an idea of the bewilderment and despair that Rothko sensed late in his life. OPENING HOURS: Tue & Wed: 10.00 - 18.00, Thur - Sat: 10.00 - 21.00, Sun: 10.00 - 18.00 Image Credits: Image 1: Mark Rothko (1903-1970) No. 12, 1951, Mischtechnik auf Leinwand, 145,4 x 134 cm Privatleihgabe, © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2008 Image 2: Mark Rothko (1903-1970) Earth and Green, 1955, Öl auf Leinwand 231,5 x 187 cmMuseum Ludwig, Köln, © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2008 Image 3: Mark Rothko (1903-1970) Entrance to Subway (Subway Station /Subway Scene), 1938, Öl auf Leinwand, 86,4 x 117,5 cmCollection Kate Rothko Prizel, © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2008  |
