Abstract painter’s canvases to go on show at Tate St Ives

»»FOR the first time a group of five pivotal works of modern art are to go on show at Tate St Ives.

The paintings, from Russianborn abstract artist Mark Rothko’s series of Seagram Murals, are among the most celebrated items in the Tate collection and will be shown in a new display opening on May 25.

The mural-sized canvases were commissioned for the fashionable Four Seasons restaurant in New York’s Seagram building, designed by the architect Mies van der Rohe.

They marked a shift away from the bright colours of Rothko’s earlier paintings towards maroon, dark red and black.

A Tate spokesperson explained that Rothko wished to create a deep connection between the viewer and his works, stating: “I am interested only in expressing basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on.”

In 1959 he took a break from painting the Seagram Murals to travel to Europe with his family and visited St Ives, then becoming widely recognised as an important artists’ community, where he met other modernist painters including Terry Frost, Paul Feiler and Alan Davie.

Upon his return to the United States Rothko decided a restaurant would not be an appropriate location for his paintings. He withdrew from the commission, returned his fee and eventually, in 1969, donated nine of the works to the Tate.

They have since been shown in various numbers and configurations at Tate Britain, Tate Modern and Tate Liverpool.

Five of these works will now be seen for the first time in the Cornish town Rothko visited shortly after completing them.

The display coincides with Tate St Ives’ major summer exhibition of work by another renowned abstract painter, Beatriz Milhazes. See www.tate.org.uk for more information.