From 11 March to 30 June 2019, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna presented a retrospective of Mark Rothko. One of the aims of the VV Foundation is to support intellectually engaging and international art exhibitions, therefore we were delighted to announce that we participate in supporting this exhibition.

The exhibition  showed more than 40 of Mark Rothko’s paintings created over the period from 1930 to 1960. This was the first Rothko retrospective of such scale in Austria, encompassing the artist’s entire career as well as turning to and investigating the artist’s ideas about the sacred, the spiritual, the tragic and the eternal. Alongside artist’s own paintings, the exhibition showed works of art from Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, Byzantium, Italian and Flemish Renaissance, referring to Rothko’s considerable interest in art history.

Since the very beginning, the artist’s children Kate and Christopher was involved in the project, lending lesser-known works by Mark Rothko from their collection. Several international museums were also involved – The National Gallery of Art in Washington, The Jewish Museum in New York, Kunsthaus Zürich and others.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna holds one of the most important collections in the world – ranging from outstanding Ancient Egyptian artefacts to 19th century works of art. In recent years, the museum has organised exhibitions of 20th and 21st century art history and artists, investigating the links of these centuries to the historical art collection. The programme began in 2013 with a retrospective of painter Lucien Freud. In 2015, the programme continued with an exhibition of Joseph Cornell, while in 2019 it was the exceptional American abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. The curator of the programme and the exhibition was Jasper Sharp.