Number 11

Mark Rothko

1947

Oil on canvas

Seattle Art Museum

The evolution of Mark Rothko's painting between the 1930s and 1950s includes a body of early works strongly influenced by Surrealism and imagery drawn from biology. The stratified layers of Number 11, and Rothko's treatment of edge, atmosphere and brushstrokes, reveal elements of a formula that would define his career: intensely saturated color and a format of floating rectangles suspended in atmospheric space. Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Estate of the Artist, 1970; [Marlborough Gallery Inc. New York, 1970]; Estate of the Artist, 1977; The Mark Rothko Foundation, New York (1979-1985); The painting was given to the Seatt