Untitled

Broad horizontal bands stack across the canvas, moving from dark gray into white and finally into a deep, saturated red, with the edges of each zone left visibly brushed rather than smoothed into flatness. The painting, titled Untitled, was made in 1956 using oil on canvas, and it is held today at the National Gallery of Art, having come to the museum as a gift from the Mark Rothko Foundation. Mark Rothko (1903–1970), an American painter associated with abstract expressionism, built his compositions around large fields of color arranged in simple horizontal divisions. Looking closely, the boundary between the red and white sections shows uneven, textured strokes, so the division between the colors feels soft and handmade rather than sharply drawn, giving the whole surface a quiet sense of movement despite its simple structure.