Mark Rothko’s monumental canvases of floating color fields were representations, he said, of different emotional states. Two years before he died, in 1968, Rothko was diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm and was told to stop painting on such a large scale. With illness came discovery. He switched from oils to acrylics, and from canvas to paper, and scaled down. Though he’d worked on paper throughout his career, his output increased over those final years. From the deepest pink to the most evocative blue, these works are luminous jewels. This exhibition focuses on Rothko’s creations on paper, which are paintings in their own right. —Elena Clavarino

Travels to: The National Museum, Oslo (2024)