Mark Rothko: The Decisive Decade 1940-1950

Ends soon! CMA celebrates Mark Rothko, one of the most influential and best-known artists of the 20th century. Mark Rothko: The Decisive Decade features 37 works from the 1940s, crucial years in the development of Rothko's universally recognizable color-field paintings. Fueled by the anxieties of the late 1930s and the years of WWII, Rothko's previous figurative imagery became increasingly symbolic and dream-like. Rothko finally landed upon a new way of painting, using blocks of color which for him contained a ""breath of life"" he found lacking in most figurative painting of the time. This, the first significant exhibition of Mark Rothko's work ever to be on display in Columbus, is organized by the Arkansas Art Center, the Columbia Museum of Art, the Columbus Museum of Art and the Denver Art Museum, in conjunction with the National Gallery of Art, Washington.