Urban Landscape [verso]
1901 to 1925
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
graphite on wove paper
Dimensions
overall: 30.7 x 23.3 cm (12 1/16 x 9 3/16 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc.
Accession Number
1986.56.508.b
Art Historical Context
Mark Rothko's *Urban Landscape [verso]* offers a rare glimpse into the artist's early experimentation, created sometime between 1901 and 1925. Born Marcus Rothkowitz in 1903 in what is now Latvia, Rothko immigrated to the States as a child and grew up in Portland, Oregon before moving to New York in the 1920s. This graphite drawing on wove paper—measuring a modest 30.7 x 23.3 cm—captures an urban scene on the back (verso) of a sheet, showcasing his initial forays into representational art long before his iconic abstract color fields. Rendered in graphite, a versatile medium favored for its pr...
About the Artist
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko (born Marcus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz, September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970) stands as one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century American art and a central pioneer of Abstract Expressionism. Born into a Jewish family in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia), then part of the Russian Empire, Rothko's early life was marked by the fear and persecution faced by Jews in Tsarist Rus...