Red on Maroon
- Artist: Mark Rothko
- Date: 1959
- Medium: Oil paint, pigments and glue on canvas
- Dimensions: support: 2667 x 4572 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
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About this artwork
This is “Red on Maroon” by Mark Rothko. Painted in 1959, it was created for a 1958 commission to fill the private dining room of New York’s Seagram Building. Rothko built a scaffold in his studio to match the restaurant’s dimensions, allowing him to work on a monumental scale. The canvas is a deep maroon under‑layer, overlaid with a wide block of red that encloses a maroon square—suggesting a window or frame that blurs into the surrounding color. Rothko mixed crimson and carmine pigments, letting the edges soften and creating a sense of depth in an otherwise flat surface. The work marks a shift toward darker hues—maroon, dark red, and black—replacing the brighter palette of his earlier color‑field canvases. After more than two years, Rothko withdrew from the commission, deeming the restaurant setting inappropriate, and later presented the series to Tate. The piece remains a striking example of his exploration of human emotion through color.
See it in person
Red 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.
