To Florence, with Love

No. 21, painted by Mark Rothko in 1947.

Organized by his son, Christopher, an exhibition at Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi traces Mark Rothko’s career—and his enduring ties to the Italian city—with more than 70 paintings

By Tobias Grey

Writing from the French Riviera in the spring of 1950, Mark Rothko confided to his friend the sculptor Richard Lippold, “I am still looking for the fabulous, which they say I will find in Italy.” Rothko was 46 and in the middle of a five-month European tour. Organized by his wife, Mell, the trip was meant to help him recover from a nervous breakdown brought on by his mother’s death, in 1948. His work, too, had recently—and momentously—changed. Rothko was now painting his breakthrough color-drenched abstractions. READ ON