Mark Rothko in Florence. Palazzo Strozzi, Florence1

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Consuelo Kanaga, Mark Rothko, Yorktown Heights, ca. 1949
Gelatin silver photograph, 10 x 8in. (25.4 x 20.3cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wallace B. Putnam from the estate of Consuelo Kanaga, 82.65.367

Mark Rothko

“The progression of a painter's work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity: toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer. As examples of such obstacles, I give (among others) memory, history or geometry, which are swamps of generalization from which one might pull out parodies of ideas (which are ghosts) but never an idea in itself. To achieve this clarity is, inevitably, to be understood.”

Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko in Florence. Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

14 March to 23 August 2026

Following anthological exhibitions dedicated to Ai Weiwei, Bill Viola, Anselm Kiefer, Anish Kapoor, Marina Abramovic and Helen Frankenthaler, Palazzo Strozzi continues its exploration of contemporary art with an icon of 20th-century American painting. From 14 March to 23 August 2026, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi presents one of the most significant exhibitions ever devoted to Mark Rothko, the undisputed master of American modern art. Curated by Christopher Rothko and Elena Geuna, Rothko in Florence is a unique project, conceived and produced specifically for Palazzo Strozzi to celebrate the artist’s special relationship with the city. The architecture of the palazzo and Florence itself become an ideal setting in which to explore how Rothko translated the tension between classical measure and expressive freedom into painting, generating through colour a renewed perception of space that transcends the two-dimensional surface of the canvas.

The exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi retraces Rothko’s entire career with over 70 works from major international museums and prestigious private collections, including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Tate in London, Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou in Paris, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

From Palazzo Strozzi, the project extends into the city through two special satellite interventions at locations particularly significant to the artist: the Museum van San Marco, where a selection of works will be presented in dialogue with the frescoes of Fra Angelico, and the Vestibule of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana designed by Michelangelo[4].

Mark Rothko, No.3/No. 13 (1949; oil on canvas, 216.5 x 164.8 cm; New York, MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art, Bequest of Mrs. Mark Rothko through The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. 428.1981)
© 1998 by Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York [3]

«No. 3/No. 13 is an early example of a compositional structure that Rothko would continue to explore for more than two decades. Narrowly separated blocks of color hover against a colored ground. Their edges are soft and irregular, so that when Rothko used closely related tones the blocks sometimes seem barely to emerge from the ground. The green bar in No. 3/No. 13, on the other hand, appears to vibrate against the orange around it, creating an optical flicker. In fact, the canvas is full of gentle movement, as blocks emerge and recede and surfaces seem to breathe. Just as the edges tend to fade and blur, the colors are never completely flat, and the faint unevenness in their intensity reveals the artist’s exploration of the technique of scumbling: by planting bold colors on top of a haze of translucent layers of paint, he created ambiguity, a shifting between solidity and impalpable depth.

The sense of boundlessness in Rothko’s paintings has been related to the aesthetics of the sublime, an implicit or explicit concern of a number of his fellow painters in the New York School. The remarkable color in his paintings was for him only a means to a larger end: “I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom,” he said. “If you...are moved only by...color relationships, then you miss the point."»[4]

Mark Rothko in previous exhibitions at Palazzo Strozzi

Helen Frankenthaler, Dipingere senza regole, Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze, veduta della sale 4, con Mark Rothko, Untitled (Senza titolo), 1949 [© Photo Ela Bialkowska OKNOstudio]

Helen Frankenthaler, Dipingere senza regole, Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze, veduta della sale 4,
con Mark Rothko, Untitled (Senza titolo), 1949 [1]

American Art 1961-2001, Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze. Veduta delle sale, con Louise Nevelson, Sky Cathedral Presence, 1951-1964, e Mark Rothko, No. 2, 1963 [© photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO Studio]

Mark Rothko , No. 2, 1963, Minneapolis, Walker Art Center. Dono Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. 1985
© 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / ARS, New York [American Art 1961-2001, Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze] [1]

Mark Rothko in Florence

March 14 - July 26 2026

Palazzo Strozzi
Piazza degli Strozzi, Firenze

www.palazzostrozzi.org

Mark Rothko and Fra Angelico Throughout his life, Rothko engaged with philosophical, aesthetic and historiographical issues, constantly redefining and questioning his own position as an artist. His ideas reveal his involvement with and research into early Italian painting, particularly that of Giotto di Bondone (1264–1337) and Fra Angelico. His numerous trips to Italy allowed him to admire the works of Giotto and Beate Angelico in situ. During his first trip to Europe in 1950, Mark Rothko found deep inspiration in Fra Angelico's frescoes in the monastery of San Marco in Florence. Fra Angelico's ecclesiastical commissions, painted in the fifteenth century, were also expressions of his faith and devotion. Rothko was impressed by the subtle way in which the artist used light and colour, and how his frescoes invited contemplative viewing. For Rothko, the frescoes reflected what Hegel described as the invention of “artistic interiority”. This experience offered Rothko a gateway to emotional transcendence, which formed the impetus for his own work. It was the meditative and inner atmosphere in the frescoes of San Marco that Rothko hoped to evoke himself, and with which he defined his artistic conception of space: Rothko imagined chapel-like spaces ‘in which the traveller or traveller could contemplate one detail of a painting in a small room’. Throughout his life, Rothko insisted that he was not an abstract painter. He controlled the hanging of his works and called his paintings “murals”, analogous to the Italian technique of fresco painting. In 1957, he wrote, ‘I am interested only in expressing the basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on [...]. The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.’[5]
Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze	Museo di San Marco, veduta posteriore	Beato Angelico, la grande mostra a Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze
Exhibitions Palazzo Strozzi, a selection Angelico, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze, 26 September 2025 - 25 January 2026 Tracey Emin. Sex and Solitude, Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze, 16 March 2025 - 20 July 2025 Helen Frankenthaler, Dipingere senza regole. Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze, 27 September 2024 - 26 January 2025 American Art 1961-2001, The Walker Art Center Collections, from Andy Warhol to Kara Walker, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, 28 May 2021 - 29 August 2021 The exhibition brings together an outstanding selection of more than 80 works by 53 artists including Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, Louise Nevelson, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Bruce Nauman, Barbara Kruger, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Matthew Barney, Kara Walker and many more.



Helen Frankenthaler, Dipingere senza regole. Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze	Olafur Eliasson, Solar compression, 2016. Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze – 2022	Marina Abramovic, The Cleaner, Palazzo Strozzi, 2018

American Art 1961-2001, Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze. Veduta delle sale, Crossing Boundaries, con un focus su Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg e Jasper Johns	American Art 1961-2001, Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze. Veduta delle sale, con Louise Nevelson, Sky Cathedral Presence, 1951-1964, e Mark Rothko, No. 2, 1963	American Art 1961-2001, Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze. Veduta delle sale Crossing Boundaries, con un focus su Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg e Jasper Johns



Artists in residence Trova la casa perfetta per la tua vacanza \| Tuscan Holiday houses \| Podere Santa Pia

Celebrare il dolce far niente	A beautiful early evening by the pool, in the resplendent Tuscan sun, time takes on a languid quality	Visia da Podere Santa Pia, fino al mare e Montecristo

Reflections on the pool: Tuscan designs for swimming

Colline sotto Podere Santa Pia, con ampia vista sulla Maremma Grossetana

[1] Photo by Consuelo Kanaga [www.brooklynmuseum.org, No restrictions, Link] This image was uploaded by the Brooklyn Museum as a content partnership, and is considered to have no known copyright restrictions by the institutions of the Brooklyn Museum. [2] In Tiger's Eye, Vol. 1, no 9, October 1949; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 170 [3] Mark Rothko, No.3/No. 13 (1949; oil on canvas, 216.5 x 164.8 cm; New York, MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, Bequest of Mrs. Mark Rothko through The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. 428.1981) © 1998 by Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. [4] Excerpt from the publication MoMA Highlights: 375 Works from The Museum of Modern Artn (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2019)