Profile of a Woman Facing Right, Left Arm Extended 

This drawing, Profile of a Woman Facing Right, Left Arm Extended, was made by Mark Rothko, probably early in his career, using graphite on paper. The lines are spare, economical, but also tentative. Rothko allows the paper itself to serve as a tonal field – something he would famously explore later in his color field paintings. In this work, the material of the paper is crucial, its inherent qualities of substance, texture, and color, setting the stage. The work feels like a study, and gives a sense of Rothko’s process; he is thinking through the figure, almost feeling his way around the forms, as if he is understanding the world through the very act of drawing. It gives us a sense of the artist, in his studio, working through ideas and methods that would later define him. In this way, we can appreciate the hand-made, process-oriented nature of Rothko's work, whether a sketch like this, or one of his mature paintings. These are both products of labor and the context of their making.