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2022 Mark inner vision 30x24.jpg

#storybehindtheart

Mark Rothko painted Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose in 1950. He had reached his signature style of the "multiforms". He declared "I'm not visual, I do not look, I use inner vision” ;"I have nothing to say in words which I would stand for" and that "the progression of a painter's work (...) will be toward clarity".

He was at the time represented by Betty Parsons who had organized yearly solo shows for him between 1947 and 1951. However, this painting was not part of his last show at the Parsons Gallery in April 1951. Rothko left Parsons to join the Sidney Janis Gallery and the painting was sold through them.

Clifford Still, a close friend of Rothko, declared at the occasion of the exhibition that it was "the work of a very great man and I do not use the term with abandon. I consider myself one of the specially favored to know and to perceive this power and to have seen and I think understood its genesis and development". 

Briefly owned by Eliza Bliss Parkinson, the painting then passed to David Rockefeller, becoming the first abstract work of art to belong to this most illustrious of collectors. The work was sold in May 2007 to the Royal family of Qatar for 72.84 million (USD), then setting the record of the current most expensive post-war work of art sold at auction.

Sources:

Mark Rothko: A Biography By James E. B. Breslin

Mark's inner vision, 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 30" x 24" (76 x 61 cm) 

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