Mark Rothko’s monumental canvases of floating color fields were representations, he said, of distinct emotional states. “I’m not an abstractionist,” Rothko explained. “I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.” In the late 1930s, Rothko worked in the New York City subway, painting portraits of commuters—elongated figures that already suggested isolation and quiet unease. During the 1940s, he moved away from figurative work altogether; even symbolism, he concluded, was too literal. By the early 1950s, Rothko arrived at the paintings for which he is best known: planes of hovering rectangular forms—often referred to as “multiforms”—set against luminous grounds. He would pursue this vision until his death, his palette growing increasingly dark and muted. This exhibition in Florence brings together 70 paintings. In the words of the curators, it explores the way Rothko “translated the tension between classical measure and expressive freedom into painting.” —Elena Clavarino