Black on Maroon
- Artist: Mark Rothko
- Date: 1958
- Medium: Oil paint, glue tempera and acrylic paint on canvas
- Dimensions: support: 2286 x 2070 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Black on Maroon” by Mark Rothko. In 1958 Rothko was asked to paint a series for the exclusive Four Seasons restaurant in New York’s Seagram Building. He built a scaffold in his studio to match the dining room’s size, so he could work at the same scale the diners would see. The result is a massive, unframed canvas painted in oil, glue tempera and acrylic. A deep maroon ground covers the canvas, overlaid by a large black rectangle that feathered into the maroon, enclosing two narrow maroon strips that look like a window frame. The black paint was applied in fast, broken strokes with a wide brush, creating movement and a sense of depth.
Rothko said the work was “involved with the scale of human feelings, the human drama.” The palette shifted from his earlier bright colors to darker tones—maroon, dark red and black—making the pieces moodier. After more than two years, he withdrew from the commission, feeling the restaurant setting was unsuitable, and later donated the works to Tate. This piece is part of the Seagram Mural series, a key moment in his exploration of colour field painting.
See it in person
Black on Maroon is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
