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Works on Paper
During the 1920s and 1930s, Rothko produced hundreds of figurative works on small sheets of paper and in sketchbooks, both as studies for paintings and as independent works. Many of the works, including images of the nude, portraits of family and friends, subway riders, and the geometry of the city, will be reproduced for the first time in the catalogue raisonné. As a young artist, Rothko explored a range of styles—realism, expressionism, symbolism, surrealism. During the 1940s his experimental spirit imbued his works on paper with a unique mastery that often challenged his contemporary canvases. Moving increasingly toward abstraction by the end of the 1940s, Rothko's compositions were marked by the translucent rectangles of color within a chromatic field that became his signature style.
Rothko continued working on paper intermittently throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, but following a debilitating illness he turned almost exclusively to painting on paper from 1968 until his death in 1970. Many of these late sheets were mounted on panels or stretched linen, which often leads them to be classified as canvases rather than paintings on paper. One task of the catalogue raisonné is to clarify these distinctions.
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