    Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1944/1945, National Gallery of Art, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc., 1986.43.181
Inspired by the surrealist technique of automatic writing--letting the brush
meander without conscious control in an attempt to release the creative
forces of the unconscious--Rothko loosened up his technique and
developed a more abstract imagery. In remarkably free watercolors of the
mid-1940s, related to the art of the surrealists Joan Miró, André Masson,
as well as Arshile Gorky, Rothko explored the fluidity of the medium to evoke a
vision of primeval life.
  
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