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Label Text Rothko was a major innovator of color-field painting, a segment of the 1940s-50s Abstract Expressionist movement. Light Over Gray exemplifies his mature style. Two indistinct rectangles hover over a deep red background. The shapes are isolated from one another, and seem to represent many possible dualities; earth and sky, light and dark, or life and death. The uneven, pulsating colors, as in much of Rothko’s work, seem to project and recede, giving the impression of movement. The painting’s large size and nebulous spaces also add to its sense of spirituality and intimacy. Rothko intended his works to represent universal ideas that would evoke a personal response in the viewer. “I’m not an abstract artist,” he claimed, “I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on…The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience as I had when I painted them.”
Rothko was born Marcus Rothkovitch in Dvinsk (present day Daugavpils) in the Latvian area of Russia in 1903. Ten years later his family emigrated to the United States and settled in Portland, Oregon. In 1921 he enrolled at Yale Univerity but became dissatified with academic studies and dropped out after two years. In 1925 he embarked on a career as a painter and studied for a brief time with Max Weber at the Art Students League in New York. From 1929 to 1952 he supported his work as a painter by teaching at the Center Academy in Brooklyn and during the 1930's was employed for a time by the W.P.A. From the late 1940's to the late 1950's Rothko employed bright hues to a large extent, but during the last ten to twelve years of his life, the colors tend to become more somber, brooding, and mysterious, culminating in the black paintings just before he committed suicide in 1970. Source: Bulletin, July-August 1975.
Exhibition History"The Abstract Tradition in American Art," Des Moines Art Center, Dec. 7, 1991 - Feb. 23, 1992

"Abstract Expressionism: The Critical Developments," Albright-Knox Art Gallery (The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy), Buffalo, N.Y., Sept. 19 - Nov. 19, 1987

"Highlights from Three Collections: The Bohen, Coffin and Cowles Collections," Des Moines Art Center, July 8 - Sept. 11, 1983

"Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art," Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, 9 February - 4 March, 1972

"Recent Paintings by Seven Americans," Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, 24 September - 20 October 1956
Published ReferencesTHE NATHAN EMORY COFFIN COLLECTION, a portfolio of fifty selections from the collection, published by the Des Moines Art Center to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Nathan Emory Coffin, 1981, b/w ill.

Nick Baldwin, DES MOINES SUNDAY REGISTER, July 13, 1975, p.7A, color ill. front page

DMAC Bulletin, July/Aug. 1975, cover ill.

DES MOINES ART CENTER: SELECTED PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES AND WORKS ON PAPER, Des Moines Art Center, 1985, ref. p.187, color ill. pl.XXVII, p.123

AN UNCOMMON VISION: THE DES MOINES ART CENTER, Des Moines Art Center, 1998, ref. p.238, color ill. p.239

ROTHKO, by Kate Prizel Rothko and Christopher Rothko, publ. 2022 by Rizzoli Electa (a division of Rizzoli International Publ. Inc, NY, color illus. pl. 169, p. 255, index p.379
DimensionsCanvas (/image): 67 3/4 × 50 in. (172.1 × 127 cm)
Accession Number 1975.15
Classificationspainting
CopyrightARS
SignedMark Rothko 1956 (verso u,r)
Inscriptions#5316 "Light Over Gray" 1956 67" x 50" (verso c,l)
ProvenanceArtist; (Sidney Janis Gallery, New York); Charles Carpenter, New Canaan, CT [purchased from the previous, 1956]; (Sidney Janis Gallery, New York); Meshulam Riklis [purchased from the previous, 1972]; (Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Inc., New York); Des Moines Art Center [purchased from the previous, 1975]

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Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines

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Light over Gray
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Mark Rothko
ca. 1944
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
John Koch
1952-1953
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Walter Wellington Quirt
1951
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Gardner George Symons
date unknown
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Ralph Albert Blakelock
date unknown
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Roy Lichtenstein
1969
Photo Credit: Rich Sanders, Des Moines
Agnes Pelton
1928