MARCH 12 to JUNE 30, 2019 MARK ROTHKO Mark Rothko (1903–1970)

MARCH 12 TO MARK ROTHKO JUNE 30, 2019 Mark Rothko (1903–1970) was among the most remarkable artists of the twentieth century. This exhibition, the first ever to be mounted in Austria, presents a survey of Rothko’s career through more than forty major paintings to explore ideas of the sacred, the spiritual, the tragic and the timeless. The artist’s children, Kate and Christopher have been closely involved in the project from its very beginning, and have themselves kindly lent a number of paintings from the family collection.

Presented within the Kunsthistorisches Museum, whose historical collections trace some five thousand years human creativity from Ancient Egypt to the Baroque, the exhibition provides a unique opportunity to examine Rothko’s deep and sustained interest in the art of the past. From his earliest visits as a student to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and his first encounters with Rembrandt, Vermeer and classical art and architecture, to his trips to Europe to see its churches, chapels and Old Master painting collections in Paris, London, Venice, Arezzo, Siena, Rome, Pompeii and Florence, Rothko dedicated himself to the study of historical art and architecture.

The exhibition underlines the influence of specific places on his stylistic development, from Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library and Fra Angelico’s murals in the convent of San Marco in Florence, to the Greek temples of Paestum and the Baptistery of Torcello in Venice. When Rothko broke with tradition in the latter part of his life to create a radical new form of artistic expression, he did so with extensive knowledge and respect for what had come before. In the words of the critic John Berger, Rothko looked back “in a way such as no painter before had ever done”.

The exhibition reveals the radical development of Rothko’s work across several decades, from his early figurative paintings of the 1930s, through the transitional years of the 1940s to the groundbreaking mature works of the 1950s and 60s. At the heart of the exhibition is an entire gallery of large-scale mural paintings produced in 1958-59, originally commissioned for the Seagram Building in New York. This is followed by a final gallery of classic paintings from the last decade of Rothko’s life that demonstrate how he learnt from the techniques of the Old Masters, layering colour in the manner of Titian and developing a sense of ‘inner light’ similar to that of Rembrandt.

With unsparing intensity and a total commitment to risk, Rothko created a form of human drama that continues to move and inspire artists, curators and the general public to this day. In the words of Gerhard Richter: “He was a man who created a special art for us, and no one else will do such paintings again. I believe Rothko will be important for centuries to come.”

Rothko never visited Austria, but he is thought to have seen the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum when they were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1950. He did, however, know the country through its music, about which he was passionate. He owned recordings by the Vienna Konzerthaus of Mozart, Schubert, Haydn and Beethoven, and once famously said: „I became a painter because I wanted to raise painting to the level of poignancy of music and poetry.“ Curated by Jasper Sharp with the close support and advice of Christopher Rothko, the exhibition is presented in the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s Picture Gallery. Major loans have been secured from the Rothko Family and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in addition to museums including the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, the Jewish Museum, New York, Kunstmuseum Bern and Kunstmuseum Basel. The accompanying catalogue includes contributions from Christopher Rothko, Jasper Sharp and Thomas Crow and has been published in both English and German.

Exhibition design: Michael Embacher and Christoph Wirth Lighting design: Philipp Metternich

Modern and Contemporary Art at the Kunsthistorisches Museum

The Kunsthistorisches Museum is uniquely placed to present such an exhibition. Its collection of Old Master paintings by artists including Bruegel, Caravaggio, Dürer, Holbein, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, Velazquez and Vermeer is complemented by antiquities from Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, a remarkable Kunstkammer of naturalia, exotica, scientifica and artificilia, arms and armour, tapestries, musical instruments and much more. Seen together, the collections represent some 5,000 years of human endeavour, from Ancient Egypt until the year 1800. In recent years, the museum has deepened its engagement with the art and artists of more recent times in order to explore their relationship with our historical collections. A new programme of major exhibitions was initiated in 2013 with a survey exhibition of the painter Lucian Freud, conceived together with the artist before his death. The programme continued in 2015 with a retrospective exhibition of the boxes and collages of Joseph Cornell in conversation with the Kunstkammer, the first major show of this artist to have been staged in Europe for more than three decades. The exhibition of Mark Rothko in 2019 now continues this dialogue. BIOGRAPHY MARK ROTHKO

Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rotkovich on 25 September 1903 in Dvinsk, part of the Russian Empire (now Daugavpils, Latvia). In 1913, Rothko immigrated to the United States with his mother and sister, joining his father and brothers who had settled some years previously in Portland, Oregon. After studying at Yale, which he left without graduating, Rothko arrived in New York in 1925. Following an invitation from a friend to join a life drawing class, he developed an interest in art and enrolled at the Art Students League. He was a regular visitor at this time to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

In 1929 Rothko was offered a position teaching children at the Center Academy, Brooklyn Jewish Center, a job he retained until 1952. He married his first wife, Edith Sachar, in 1932, and had his first solo exhibition in New York at the Contemporary Arts Gallery the following year. Soon afterwards, he and several artists friends formed the avant-garde group The Ten, and began to exhibit together. From 1936 to 1937, Rothko was employed as part of the Federal Works Progress Administration, established during the Depression as a means to support out-of-work artists. As Rothko’s work developed during the early 1940s, he also began to commit his thoughts to writing, in a manuscript called The Artist’s Reality, which was only published decades after his death. He exhibited at Peggy Guggenheim’s museum-gallery Art of This Century in 1945, married his second wife, Mell Beistle, and together with artists such as Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Willen de Kooning and Clyfford Still formed a group of Abstract Expressionists whose groundbreaking work saw New York replace Paris as the centre of the contemporary art world.

Rothko’s artistic breakthrough came in 1949 when he developed the classic compositional format for which he would become best known. A few months later, in 1950, he made the first of four trips to Europe to visit churches, chapels and Old Master paintings; the art and architecture of Italy, in particular, would have a strong influence on the development of his work. His first major museum exhibition took place at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1954, and from1958 to 1969 he worked on three major commissions: a series of large-scale canvases for the Seagram Building, New York; a group of mural paintings for Harvard University; and a cycle of monumental canvases for a chapel in Houston, Texas, today known as the “Rothko Chapel”. Following a period of ill health, Rothko took his own life in February 1970. His wife Mell died six months later, and they were survived by a daughter, Kate and a son, Christopher. PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS Press photographs are available in the press section of our website free of charge, for your topical reporting: http://press.khm.at/.

The picture files provided by us must not be manipulated, cropped or used for any other purposes. Our press photographs may be published only with complete references to each picture, including a copyright notice.

Mark Rothko (1903-1970) Underground Fantasy c.1940 Oil on canvas 87.3 × 118.2 cm © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Bildrecht, Vienna, 2019, Photo: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Mark Rothko (1903-1970) Room in Karnak 1946 Oil on canvas, 94.9 × 69.9 cm © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Bildrecht, Vienna, 2019

Mark Rothko (1903-1970) Untitled 1950 Oil on canvas, 230.2 × 128.9 cm © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Bildrecht, Vienna, 2019 Mark Rothko (1903-1970) No. 16 (Red, White and Brown) 1957 Oil on canvas 252.2 × 207 cm © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Bildrecht, Vienna, 2019, Photo: Kunstmuseum Basel

Mark Rothko (1903-1970) Untitled (Red, Orange) 1968 Oil on canvas, 233 x 176 cm © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Bildrecht, Vienna, 2019, Photo: Robert Bayer/Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Sammlung Beyeler Mark Rothko (1903-1970) Untitled 1969 Oil on canvas, 233.7 × 200.3 cm © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Bildrecht, Vienna, 2019

The accompanying catalogue includes contributions from Christopher Rothko, Jasper Sharp and Thomas E. Crow and has been published in both English and German.

Sabine Haag – Jasper Sharp (eds.) Mark Rothko 184 p. € 30

EXHIBITION PROGRAMME GUIDED TOURS IN ENGLISH

Every Thursday, 5pm and Saturday, 2pm Participation fee: € 4

TALKS

Monday, March 18, 7pm Christopher Rothko Mark Rothko and the Inner World Talk in English and booksigning

Monday, May 20, 7pm Ben Street Mark Rothko: Seeing Red Talk in English

Place: Cupola Hall Please register at [email protected]

CURATOR TOURS With Jasper Sharp

MI 20.3., 16 Uhr und MO 3.6. 16 Uhr In English

DO 25.4., 16 Uhr In German

Participation fee: € 4 Please register at [email protected] ARTIST TOURS

Herwig Kempinger Friday, April 5, 4pm In German

Judith Eisler Friday, May 24, 4pm In English

Participation fee: € 4 Please register at [email protected]

CONCERT „Rothko Chapel“ (1971) By Morton Feldman

Company of Music / Johannes Hiemetsberger Ensemble MUK.wien.aktuell

Monday, May 27, 7 pm Saturday, June 29, 7 pm

Place: Cupola Hall Tickets available at https://shop.khm.at/tickets/ OPENING HOURS AND ENTRANCE FEES

Kunsthistorisches Museum Adults € 16,- Maria-Theresien-Platz Concessions € 12,- 1010 Vienna Vienna City Card € 15,- Groups (of 10 or over) € 12,- Annual Ticket € 44,- Annual Ticket under 25 € 25,- Tue–Sun, 10am – 6pm Children and teens under 19 frei Thu till 9pm Audio guide (Engl./German) € 5,-

June, July and August open daily!

Online tickets are available at https://shop.khm.at/de/tickets/

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