Untitled (seated figure in interior) c. 1938

Mark Rothko made this untitled painting of a seated figure, indoors, on a sheet using an unknown medium. The way Rothko layers these colours is really interesting. Look at how the figure almost blends into the background, smudged and blurred with thick daubs of paint. The boundaries between things seem to dissolve. I am drawn to the painting within a painting on the left. See the bright pink background, with the blue figure outlined in white? It is almost childlike in its simplicity, with a crude, almost scribbled form. There's a real tension between the two parts of this image. On the right, we have a figure, rendered with a sort of hazy realism, while on the left, there's a more abstract, playful composition, full of energy. Rothko's early work focused on figuration before he moved onto abstraction. You can see how his process evolved from this piece. It reminds me a little of Picasso’s early style, a real sense of experimentation and an interest in the relationship between representation and abstraction.