Mark Rothko was one of a small group of great artists who in the 1950s, established New York City as central to the art world. While his work was an enormous critical success, critics had trouble writing about it because a painting had to be considered strictly as itself. To write criticism that mentioned a work’s emotional or spiritual effect on the writer was really not acceptable. Rothko’s paintings had viewers - John Ashbery, Robert Hughes and Robert Goldwater - publicly scolding one another for describing them in the words of people who had been profoundly, subjectively and emotionally affected.
Rothko, with his fellow Abstract Expressionist Adolph Gottlieb, famously wrote in 1943: “We favor the simple expression of the complex thought.” Undoubtedly full of silent communication, these richly hued paintings are Rothko’s thoughts made manifest.
The paintings reproduced in this set of notecards are in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the world's most significant repository of work by Mark Rothko.
This notecard collection includes five each of the following four images:
Untitiled, 1949
Untitled, 1955
Untitled, 1953
No 1, 1961
Contains 20 blank notecards (5 each of 4 images) and 20 envelopes.
Comes in a sturdy, reuseable box, great for storage of special little treasures.
Card Dimensions: 5 x 7 inches
