I chose Rothko because he is perhaps the most transcendent artist, the most mystical, the most profound, perhaps the most poetic as well. I'm also very interested now in the relationship with Russian painting. Malévich comes to mind at certain moments. How, in some way, his roots are present in that attitude of an artist linked to the spiritual, to a spirituality that reminds one of Orthodox religion. I believe that this type of relationship is so profound that sometimes not even the artist can be aware of it.
For me, the important thing about this work is that the artist has played on two levels: on the level of geometric abstraction, the purest abstraction, and on the level of the figuration of the relationship with a possible landscape.
I, as a spectator, have chosen the idea of the landscape: how it is framed, with that blue which, in some way, rotates and acts as a moulding of the work itself, and how the lines, that red line, those two green tones and the red of the horizon form a landscape. The line that divides those two shades of green is very important. It makes possible for the work to have a background, a perspective, a relationship of two planes within the same green. And that twilight red, which marks the line of the horizon of a very minimalist, very sober, very spiritual landscape. I think he is an artist of great spirituality.
The exhibition is fantastic, in that sense, because it starts from a photograph, from an event, from a reaction of a group of artists who feel marginalized or do not feel recognized in their work. In 2020, because these artists have become classical artists. In order to understand that Rothko was a revolutionary, we have to look at historical data because, from today's point of view, the viewer does not see a revolutionary or provocative artist, he sees a classic artist. An artist who has gone from innovation and revolution and from provocation, to assimilation, to devotion, which is what somehow happens with classical art.
What is classical art? Well, it is what time ends up drawing as something established, assumed, valued, recognized. But the moment it is recognized, valued and admired, it leaves, loses in some way that halo of provocation, of struggle.
Why does this happen? Because the one who has changed is the spectator. We, the spectators, have changed, we have learned the lessons that artists give throughout the history of art. What do they teach? A different way of looking: of looking at reality, of perceiving reality, of relating to reality.