Mark RothkoAmerican, 1903–1970Untitled (Purple, White, and Red)
Can I see it?
Not on view at present
Where is “Untitled (Purple, White, and Red)” now? Collection: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Not on view at present. Checked September 29, 2026.
Chicago, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the painting
Untitled (Purple, White, and Red) follows the characteristic format of Mark Rothko’s mature work, in which stacked rectangles of color appear to float within the boundaries of the canvas. By directly staining the canvas with many thin washes of pigment and paying particular attention to the edges where the fields interact, he achieved the effect of light radiating from the image itself. This technique suited Rothko’s metaphysical aims: to offer painting as a doorway into purely spiritual realms, making it as immaterial and evocative as music, and to directly communicate the most essential, raw forms of human emotion.
Art Institute of ChicagoCC BY 4.0
Details
- Accession number
- 1983.509
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Image: Art Institute of Chicago — © the artist or rights holder
In the life of Mark Rothko
The whole life1929–1952
Teaching children at the Brooklyn Jewish Center
From 1929 Rothko taught drawing, painting and clay sculpture part-time to schoolchildren at the Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, where he remained until 1952.
1949–1956
Large vertical canvases: being “inside” the picture
For seven years Rothko painted in oil only on large vertical canvases so that the viewer would feel “enveloped within” the painting. Critics saw this as compensating for a lack of substance; he replied that he painted large because he wanted to be intimate, and advised viewers to stand as close as eighteen inches away.
1950s
The poet Stanley Kunitz
The critic Dore Ashton saw Rothko’s acquaintance with the poet Stanley Kunitz as a significant bond of these years, their conversations feeding Rothko’s enterprise; Kunitz saw him as a primitive and a shaman who finds the magic formula.
1952
“Fifteen Americans” and a quarrel with Newman
Dorothy Canning Miller’s Fifteen Americans at MoMA formally heralded the abstract artists, but it also set Rothko against Barnett Newman, who accused him of trying to exclude him from the show.
1954
A Chicago show and a meeting with Sidney Janis
At a solo show at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1954 Rothko met the dealer Sidney Janis, who represented Pollock and Franz Kline; the relationship proved mutually beneficial.
1955
Branded a “sell-out”: the quarrel with Newman and Still
When Fortune magazine named a Rothko painting a good investment in 1955, Newman and Clyfford Still branded him a sell-out with bourgeois aspirations. Still asked for the paintings he had given Rothko over the years to be returned, and Rothko was deeply depressed by his former friends’ jealousy.
