In 1950, on a trip to Florence with his wife, Mell, Mark Rothko found himself looking for hours at Fra Angelico’s devotional frescoes at the Convent of San Marco. He was struck too by the vestibule of the Laurentian Library, a few minutes’ walk away, which Michelangelo had redesigned in the 1520s to austere effect. ‘He makes the viewers feel that they are trapped in a room where all the doors and windows are bricked up,’ said Rothko, ‘so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall.’ The vestibule had a profound influence on the Seagram Murals (1958–60), a commission for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York that Rothko ended up abandoning: his desire to create a space of intense hostility was at odds with the nature of the commission. This exhibition, co-curated by Elena Geuna and Rothko’s son Christopher, explores the unexpected affinities between Rothko’s Color Field paintings and the art of Fra Angelico in particular (14 March–23 August).
Find out more from the Palazzo Strozzi’s website.
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