Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper

Mark Rothko (1903-1970) is renowned for his towering, luminous abstract paintings on canvas. Despite Rothko's prominence, few people know that he also created nearly one thousand paintings on paper over the course of his career. The artist viewed many of these not as preliminary studies but as finished works in their own right. The remarkable paintings range from early figurative subjects and surrealist works to the soft-edged rectangular fields, often realized at monumental scale, for which Rothko is best known.
These works challenge our expectations about how painting is defined, as well as popular ideas about Rothko and his career. In this beautifully illustrated volume, Adam Greenhalgh traces the role these paintings an paper played in the artist's reception, reputation, and success. Bringing together nearly one hundred radiant, rarely displayed examples, and building on the important research conducted by Greenhalgh and his team for the catalogue raisonné of Rothko's works on paper, this revelatory exploration transforms our understanding of a preeminent twentieth-century artist.