Bringing together a group of eight paintings and works on paper from the Saint Louis Art Museum and Switzerland's Beyeler Foundation, this exhibition showcases the entire oeuvre of Mark Rothko and celebrates the diversity of nearly 30 years of artistic output from this crucial figure in the American Abstract Expressionist movement.
The exhibition includes early Surrealist imagery by Rothko while Untitled, 1948 is emblematic of the artist's abstractions, known as "multiforms". Painted in a range of blue, yellow, orange and white shapes against a salmon-colored background, this work's importance is heightened since it is the last image that Rothko signed on the front of the canvas. The artist famously affirmed that his paintings should be "tragic and timeless"— an observation that inspired the exhibition title.
