Untitled
- Artist: Mark Rothko
- Date: c.1946–7
- Medium: Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions: support: 1000 x 700 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
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About this artwork
This is the “Untitled” by Mark Rothko. Painted around 1946–47, it sits in a key transitional period where he was moving from myth‑laden scenes to pure abstraction. The canvas is a soft wash of lilacs, pinks, browns, with specks of blue, green and white that feel almost like a watercolour drip. Rothko even scratched the surface in places to expose the primed ground underneath, adding a tactile depth that echoes the unconscious.
The shapes themselves are biomorphic, “every shape becomes an organic entity, inviting the multiplicity of associations inherent in all living things.” If you tilt the work, a vertical blue band can look like a figure’s head, a hint of the figure that still lingers in his early twenties. The piece was presented by the Mark Rothko Foundation in 1986, a testament to its enduring resonance.
See it in person
Untitled 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.
