Gottlieb/Rothko: The Realist Years

Gottlieb/Rothko: The Realist Years brings together more than thirty paintings and works on paper by Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb from the 1920s and 1930s, examining a formative period before both artists became central figures of Abstract Expressionism. The exhibition explores their friendship, shared studio life, and mutual influences, including the School of Paris, German Expressionism, and their close relationship with Milton Avery. Side-by-side portraits, interiors, and figurative compositions reveal parallel experiments with flattened space, bold contours, colour, and symbolic imagery. The exhibition traces how these early realist works gradually opened the way toward the abstraction and emotional intensity that later defined both artists.