Exploring Mark Rothko’s paintings on paper

When Mark Rothko died in 1970 he was  widely considered one of the greatest   artists of the 20th century now the roots of his  imagination are on display and Robert Costa is our guide his works are mesmerizing and recognized  worldwide swaths of color and floating fuzzy edged  
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rectangles all part of the signature vision  of the formidable 20th century artist Mark Rothko well everybody knows and  loves Rothko’s large abstract   canvases but very few people know  that he made nearly 3,000 works on
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paper now an exhibit at the National Gallery of  Art in Washington DC hopes to tell a lesser known   Rothko story The Trail of paper works the artist  Left Behind Adam Greenhalgh is the curator we can   see his sources we can see his early Ambitions  his aspirations and the way that he understands  
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paper to be just as significant and important as  his much better known canvases Rothko on paper is   equally as Innovative and he did not consider  these to be studies or prep work when you look   at these they don’t even seem like paper works  but this is paper yes indeed these are mounted  
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in the way that Rothko insisted that his classic  format paintings on paper be mounted so they’re   attached to either a hardboard panel or linen and  wrapped around a stretcher or strainer to give   them this three-dimensional presence born Markus  Rothkovitch in what is now Latvia he immigrated to  
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Portland Oregon with his family in the early 1900s  he eventually moved to New York working teaching   and struggling but also learning and evolving as  an artist many of his early paper works Echo other   Visionaries and hint at what was to come you can  see the colors in the background they remind me  
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of an a later Rothko I think you’re right some of  these uh sort of blocks of color in the background   really point to the later abstractions to come he  sort of tried to keep a 9 to 5, 9 to 6 schedule   tried to have dinner with the family every night  Kate Rothko Prizel is the artist’s daughter she  
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says her father was a loving hardworking man who  anchored their family he was also intense and   private especially when painting I as a smaller  child was fairly often uh dropped off by my mother   at the studio when she needed to get something  done and it was very clear that my father did  
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even for me at a young age that my father did  not like to be watched painting he would always   set me up in my own corner with my own artwork  with the idea that I was going to be absorbed in   my work he was going to be absorbed in his work  it was for him this kind of uh sacred I think  
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deeply emotional psychological process Christopher  Rothko is the artist’s son to be distracted during   that was was something that would be really so  counterproductive so that sort of mystery carries   over to his materials he was is known for making  a lot of his own paints taking ground pigments  
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and making his own home brew and part of the  luminescence that we see and see in his work is   the result of him constantly experimenting trying  to come up with the right concoction I don’t think   those were Secrets he was particularly guarding  but it was simply part of him making something  
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was that was very very personal that sense of  intimacy that emotional truth is evident today   for so many who experience Rothko’s work and with  Blockbuster exhibits in Paris and Washington maybe   you’re just supposed to experience it and a claim  on television you to feel something right it’s  
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like looking into something very deep and at  the auction house and selling at $77,500,000   Rothko’s popularity is soaring more than 50  years after his death Christopher Rothko says   his father sought to create a universal language  one that spoke to people’s hearts I often think