The most anticipated exhibition of 2026: Mark Rothko

From March 14 to August 23, 2026, Palazzo Strozzi presents an unmissable exhibition dedicated to the great American artist Mark Rothko.
The exhibition explores the evolution of his art, from his early figurative works, in dialogue with Expressionism and Surrealism, to his celebrated abstract canvases of the 1950s and 1960s, while also exploring his connection to the Italian artistic tradition.
On display an extraordinary selection of works, including large paintings never before exhibited in Italy, from prestigious private collections and international museums such as MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

The exhibit pays homage to a central figure in the history of modern art, whose works create spaces in which color and light invite meditation and introspection, in a constant tension between abstraction and spirituality.
From Palazzo Strozzi, the project then extends to the city of Florence, involving a place particularly dear to the artist: the Museo di San Marco, deepening his relationship with Italian Renaissance art, and in particular with Fra Angelico's painting. Among twentieth-century artists, Mark Rothko is undoubtedly the one who most profoundly understood its essence, absorbing and embracing the metaphysical humanism of Fra Giovanni da Fiesole.

Rothko is known for his color field paintings, created between 1949 and 1970. These rectangular paintings, in which the artist used a single color or a very narrow palette, trace back to the expressive movement that developed in the United States after World War II, whose leading exponents included artists such as Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, and many others. Horizontal rectangles, soft and layered fields, where the color vibrates without revealing the brushstroke, are an intense expression of his inner drama.

Rothko developed a radical and personal language: no obvious figures or symbols, but color everywhere to eliminate all distractions and offer the viewer an almost spiritual experience. The large canvases are not viewed from afar, but inhabited, and color becomes a mental space. In his paintings, one can sense a profound existential tension; time seems suspended, and the fields confront one another like silent presences. Rothko himself said: "I believe that color, aided by light, enters into a relationship with the soul and brings about unexpected emotional consequences." For this reason, he recommended observing his works up close, almost from an intimate distance, to allow oneself to be completely enveloped by the chromatic field: his deep reds, layered blacks, incandescent purples and oranges are fields of emotional tension, almost interior spaces reflecting solitude, fragility, silence, but also a form of transcendence.

His rejection of purely decorative art was categorical: art should speak to deep emotions, not simply be "beautiful." The artist was a man of complex mind, averse to labels, particularly that of "colorist," and a painter continually seeking to represent the precariousness of human drama.
An opportunity not to be missed: the Florentine exhibition is undoubtedly one of the most important exhibitions ever dedicated to Mark Rothko. Visit it with Firenzecard!

Let's find out who Mark Rothko is
Born in Dvinsk, Russia, on September 25, 1903, at the age of 10 he moved with his family to Portland, Oregon, United States. From 1921 to 1923, he attended Yale University in New Haven on a scholarship, but after only two years he dropped out and moved to New York, a safe haven for European artists and a thriving creative center that brought together German Expressionists, French Modernists, and Surrealists, whose work greatly influenced the young Rothko, who was particularly impressed by Paul Klee and Georges Rouault.

From 1925, he studied with Max Weber at the Art Students League and, in 1928, exhibited for the first time in a group show at the Opportunity Galleries in New York. In 1933, he held his first solo exhibition at the Portland Art Museum and a subsequent solo show at the Contemporary Arts Gallery in New York.

In the early 1940s, he worked closely with Gottlieb, developing a pictorial style with mythological content, featuring simple, flat figures, influenced both by contemporary artists and by the pioneers of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Around 1945, he acquired Surrealist techniques and imagery. In 1945, Peggy Guggenheim gave him a solo exhibition at Art of This Century in New York.
In 1947 and 1949, he taught at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, where Clyfford Still also taught. Between the 1940s and 1950s, he developed his mature style, characterized by the production of large canvases in which color takes center stage, with luminous, frontal rectangles.

Despite his artistic career, Rothko remained little-known until the 1960s, so much so that his primary occupation was as an art teacher. In 1961, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held a major solo exhibition of his work; in 1962, he completed murals for Harvard University; in 1964, he was commissioned by John and Dominique de Menil to paint several monumental works for a new chapel in Houston. On February 25, 1970, he committed suicide in his New York studio, where he had retreated to live a year earlier after separating from his wife, Mell, worn out by a lifestyle marked by excess and depression. The following year, the Rothko Chapel was inaugurated in Houston.

His fame came posthumously, confirming his central role in the history of contemporary art. Indeed, Rothko is now among the world's most valuable artists: in 2012 Orange, Red, Yellow fetched nearly $87 million at Christie's, while in 2014, No. 6 (Violet, Green and Red) surpassed $180 million in a private sale. Again in November 2025, during Christie's Marquee Week in New York, No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) sold for over $62 million, setting a record for an online bid at a live auction.