PARIS – A huge show of 115 works by Mark Rothko opens in Paris this week. His son says he combined a “European soul” with “the freedom of America” to become an icon of 20th-century art.
The show at the Louis Vuitton Foundation spans Rothko’s entire career, from the more traditional figurative pictures to the huge rectangles of brooding colour for which he is best remembered.
Rothko’s stated goal was to “raise painting to the same level as music and poetry”, said his son Christopher Rothko, who helped curate the exhibition and has written a new collection of essays to coincide with it.
“My father died when I was six but we talked about music a great deal,” he told AFP ahead of the opening on Wednesday.
“He spoke of Mozart, smiling with tears in his eyes, and I think it’s the same effect with his paintings,” he added.
Marcus Rothkovitch was born to a Jewish family in…
