Pioneering Abstract Expressionist artist Mark Rothko’s monumental canvases provide a sublime and almost spiritual immersion in color and form, powerfully expressing, in the artist’s words, “basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.”

Untitled reveals Rothko’s artistic transition from painting Surrealist-inspired biomorphic forms to his mature style, in which thinly painted, soft-edged, and vertically aligned rectangles of color appear to float against a luminous ground. Painted a year after Rothko spent a summer teaching courses at the California School of Fine Arts (later the San Francisco Art Institute), Untitled incorporates a palette of yellow, pink, and orange hues that evokes the distinctive quality of light in the San Francisco Bay Area. The prominent green square suggests associations with the verdant landscapes of Northern California, as well as with springtime, renewal, and the natural cycles of life.