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Mark Rothko painted huge canvases filled with soft-edged blocks of colour, but insisted they were about emotions such as tragedy and ecstasy, not about colour. When viewers wept in front of them, he took it as proof that the feeling had reached them.

Selden Rodman, Conversations with Artists, 1957

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The story behind the card

Rothko (1903–1970) was born in Daugavpils, in today's Latvia, and moved to the United States as a child. From about 1949 he painted the works he is known for: large, glowing rectangles of colour on a coloured ground, a style often called colour field painting. In a 1956 conversation with the writer Selden Rodman, later printed in Rodman's book Conversations with Artists, he said he was interested only in basic human emotions, and that people who wept before his pictures were having the same religious experience he had while painting them. He made the canvases big so that viewers would feel inside them, advised standing as close as about 45 cm, and asked for soft, low lighting. His last great project was the Rothko Chapel in Houston: 14 dark canvases for a quiet room open to people of all faiths, which opened in 1971, a year after his death.

Türkçe oku
Mark Rothko, sınırları yumuşakça dağılan renk kütleleriyle dolu dev tuvaller boyadı, ama bu resimlerin renkle değil, trajedi ve coşku gibi duygularla ilgili olduğunu söylerdi. Tablolarının karşısında ağlayan izleyicileri, duygunun onlara ulaştığının kanıtı sayardı.
Selden Rodman, Conversations with Artists, 1957

Rothko (1903–1970), bugün Letonya sınırları içinde kalan Daugavpils'te doğdu, çocukken ailesiyle ABD'ye göç etti. Onu tanınır kılan resimleri 1949 dolaylarında yapmaya başladı: Renkli bir zeminin üzerinde yüzer gibi duran, ışıldayan büyük dikdörtgenler. Bu üsluba çoğu zaman renk alanı resmi denir. Yazar Selden Rodman'la 1956'da yaptığı ve Rodman'ın Conversations with Artists (Sanatçılarla Söyleşiler) kitabında yayımlanan konuşmada, yalnızca temel insani duyguları anlatmakla ilgilendiğini söyledi. Tablolarının önünde ağlayanların, kendisinin o resimleri yaparken yaşadığı dinsel deneyimin aynısını yaşadığını da ekledi. Tuvallerini izleyici kendini resmin içinde hissetsin diye büyük tutuyor, resimlere 45 cm kadar yakından bakılmasını öneriyor, loş bir ışık istiyordu. Son büyük işi Houston'daki Rothko Şapeli oldu: Her inançtan insana açık, sessiz bir mekân için yaptığı 14 koyu tuval. Şapel, ölümünden bir yıl sonra, 1971'de açıldı.

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