Step inside Mark Rothko's major retrospective in Florence

An encounter with a specific Florentine Renaissance space during a formative trip to Italy in 1950 would linger in Mark Rothko’s imagination for years. The vestibule of the Laurentian Library, designed by Michelangelo, is a compact yet monumental chamber dominated by a dramatic staircase in cool grey stone. Intimate yet imposing, the architecture becomes sublimated into an emotional encounter. Rothko later explained that the library’s psychological impact mirrored the effect he sought in his own paintings: '(Michelangelo) achieved just the kind of feeling I’m after' – namely the sense of being trapped so that all one can do is 'butt their heads forever against the wall.'

The library is one of two satellite locations of Rothko in Florence, a major retrospective curated by Christopher Rothko and Elena Geuna, which extends from the main exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi into spaces that were historically significant to Rothko’s own artistic sensibilities. Hanging at eye level at the base of the staircase at the Laurentian Library are two red-and-black studies for the Seagram Murals, commissioned in 1958 for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York, designed by Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe.

Rothko, already working in his mature colour-field style at that time, envisioned the murals as immersive, contemplative experiences. Visiting Pompeii on his second trip to Italy in 1959 he remarked, 'all my life I have been painting temples without knowing it.' Upon returning, he withdrew from the commission, realising that the restaurant setting would be incompatible with the works’ solemn intensity, returned the money and would later donate the murals to Tate Gallery. On the very day the works arrived at the museum, in 1970, Rothko took his own life in his studio.

Born Marcus Rothkowitz in 1903 in Daugavpils, Latvia—then part of the Russian Empire – Rothko changed his name to sound less identifiably Jewish in the 1940s, amid a biography shaped by social and political antisemitism, in Tzarist Russia as well as in the U.S., where he arrived at the age of ten. Rothko showed early talent in art and academics, and won a scholarship to Yale University, although he left before completing his degree, feeling alienated by a social environment that was hostile to Jews. (Yale awarded Rothko an honorary doctorate in 1969, some 46 years after he had left as an undergraduate.)

As the youngest sibling, Rothko was the only one in his family to receive a strict Jewish Orthodox education in Latvia, a measure his parents adopted in response to the rising pogroms. After his father’s death in 1914, Rothko turned away from traditional religious practice though he remained culturally Jewish throughout his life. The awareness of the Holocaust informed a profound sensitivity to human suffering and the search for meaning. Rothko’s quest for spirituality remained central to his work, finding expression in the unknowable, the nameless, and the transcendent qualities of his abstract colour-field paintings.

The exhibition’s second satellite section, at the Museo di San Marco, situates several of Rothko’s non-figurative works amid Fra Angelico’s religious frescoes inside the former monastery’s individual friars’ cells. Here too the tension between the architectural enclosures and the expanses of their devotional atmosphere of profoundly affected Rothko, who began envisioning roadside chapels with a single meditative painting. He would soon work a much grander masterpiece. In 1964, philanthropists John and Dominique de Menil commission him to create paintings for the (posthumously titled) Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. Originally commissioned as a Catholic chapel, Rothko designed both the murals and the interior space, creating a non-denominational sanctuary. The non-figurative, immersive quality of the chapel’s paintings embodies his lifelong engagement with existential and spiritual themes.

The main exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi, meanwhile, is organised into ten rooms that follow a chronological progression of Rothko’s career. It opens with his early figurative work, including a self-portrait, which many viewers would find surprising in their stylistic and technical simplicity. The show then moves through his exploration of Surrealism, and finds a consistent impactful register in multiple galleries of abstract colour-field paintings. There are drawings and studies for iconic commissions such as the Seagram and Harvard murals and the chapel.

The show’s sequence reflects not only stylistic development but also emotional tone: the later rooms grow increasingly dark and somber, reflecting the profound impact of the Holocaust and the broader turmoil of the mid-20th century on his work. After completing the chapel series, his health declining, Rothko painted almost exclusively on paper, returning to canvas in 1969 for a never-finalised UNESCO project. He produced eighteen black and grey paintings, several of which hang in the penultimate gallery. These are stirring, unnerving works, with striking turbulent fields, active brushwork and—for the first time—white borders that clearly defined the picture plane.

In the final months of his life, Rothko created three series of large-scale works on paper. Some echo the Black and Grey canvases, some are nearly imperceptibly dark, and others employ gentle washes of soft blues, rose-tinted earths, and terracotta tones. These late works are intensely personal, inward-turning, and imbued with quiet beauty. Christopher Rothko, a trained psychologist who has dedicated his life to his father’s legacy, referred to the room as one work, and his favorite in the show. '[My father] was known for his intellect. He loved to debate with other people. But ultimately, he was just a very warm man—a big, big heart. I think you see it in the paintings.'

'Rothko in Florence' in Florence at Palazzo Strozzi from14 March to 23 August 2026

palazzostrozzi.org