Paintings and Drawings of Mark Rothko (1903-1970) from the National Gallery in Washington:
The Artist's 100th Anniversary

On 16 December, 2003, in the Winter Palace (rooms No.
28-32) was opened an exhibition of Mark Rothko, an outstanding master of American abstract expressionism of the 20th century, to celebrate the artist's 100th anniversary. This is his first retrospective in Russia. The exhibition has been prepared by the State Hermitage Museum jointly with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, with the participation of the US Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and with the support of the US Consulate General in St. Petersburg.

The show includes over 20 paintings and drawings.

"...I do not care about combinations of colors or forms or whatever else. I want to express the key human emotions - tragedy, doom, etc., and the fact that many people weep when looking at my paintings proves that I do represent these key human emotions... People who weep in front of my paintings experience the same religious feelings that I experience when creating them," the artist was saying.

The exhibition's illustrated academic catalogue includes a preface written by Mikhail B. Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum, and articles by the prominent American art critic Dore Ashton and Laili Nasr, Curator of the National Gallery in Washington. The catalogue has been published due to sponsorship of Vyacheslav Kantor, President of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow and Chairman of the European Jewish Congress's Board of Directors.

The exhibition's Hermitage curators are Chief Research Assistant A.A. Babin and Junior Research Assistant
A.K. Mitin (Department of West European Art); the National Gallery curators are Laili Nasr and Renee Maurer.

More

Conference in the Hermitage Theater

Children of the artist Catherine and Christopher Rothko opening the exhibition

The catalogue