Mark Rothko’s No. 10 of 1949 is an incandescent test.mes nt to the artist’s arrival at his inimitable and innovative union of colour and form that established his place within the canon of American Abstraction of the mid-Twentieth Century. Figuration, born of Symbolist and Surrealist influences, was a touchstone for Rothko in his early years. Still, he burned to create his own style – his personal declaration of art's primal and inspirational role in the turbulent modernist world. Throughout the late 1940s, Rothko’s anthropomorphic images gradually dematerialise, becoming ever more ephemeral and weightless, appearing to float in a misty coalescence with the softly diffused ground. Rothko’s mother’s death in 1948 had an impact and perhaps propelled Rothko into dematerialising forms into incandescent colours of pure immersive visual experiences. By 1949, Rothko achieved an integration of light and colour within his compositions, and the soft red, yellow, orange and green of the present work announce his triumphant success in merging shape with colour, in the absence of the painterly traditions of line, narrative and spatial perspective. The series of paintings to which No. 10 belongs was named Multiforms by Rothko, and this title heralds the primacy of untethered hues and soft amorphous shapes in his aesthetic genius. When No. 10 was exhibited at the artist’s January 1950 show at the Betty Parsons Gallery, Rothko had already begun painting the canvases that would be his first in the mature style we know today as his classic masterpieces. In its reductive and expansive colour forms, No. 10 presages the grand canvases of the early 1950s.

Including No. 10, only nine works from the pivotal years of 1948-49 have been offered at auction to date. Of the 12 paintings featured in the 1950 Betty Parsons show, No. 10 is one of the three that remain in private hands. The other nine are now held in major American museums, including: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, and Frances Lehman Loeb Art Centre, New York. A major Mark Rothko exhibition, Rothko in Florence, curated by Rothko’s son, Christopher Rothko, and Elena Geuna, is taking place at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy, from March 14 to August 23, 2026. Three of the twelve works from the January 1950 Betty Parsons exhibition are also included in the show.

No. 10 once belonged to the collects ion of Mr Joseph Manfred Bransten, a well-known patron of the arts in San Francisco, who served on the Board of Directors of the Legion of Honour from 1961 to 1972, when the merger with the de Young Museum occurred that created the Replica Handbags s Museums of San Francisco. He continued to serve on the Board and was active on its Acquisitions Committee from 1972 until his death. The de Young Museum also possesses an early Rothko similar to No. 10, though painted a year earlier.

Just five years earlier, Rothko began a period of growth and creativity with his first show at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century in January 1945, followed in 1946 by his inclusion in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Annual and a one-person show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Throughout the late 1940s, Rothko shared the friendship and aspirations of artists William Baziotes, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman and most importantly, Clyfford Still, from whom he adopted the practice of using numbers for titles beginning with the Multiforms such as No. 10. The Twelve works from Betty Parsons show were numbered from 1 to 12 in the sequence chosen by the artist for the hanging that ran anticlockwise round the gallery’s main room. Later, Rothko will number his works similarly, starting with No. 1 for the first painting of each year.

The abandonment of realist titles was just one element of the rejection of sign as the central motif in painting, a rejection Rothko, Still, and Newman shared as they sought to purify their art by reducing aesthetic elements to their most basic essence. As Rothko noted in his ‘Stat.mes nt on His Attitude in Painting’ printed in 1949, “the progression of a painter’s work, as it travels in t.mes from point to point, will be toward claritys ; toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea” (Mark Rothko, ‘Stat.mes nt on His Attitude in Painting’, The Tiger’s Eye, No. 9, October 1949, p. 114).

Rothko first achieved the artistic fusion of colour and light with a series of watercolours created in the mid-1940s. In her essay for the artist’s 1978 retrospective, Diane Waldman addressed the affinity between these works on paper and the Multiforms when she noted that the “luminosity, flatness, frontality and close-value colours ascribed to this period of Rothko’s great breakthrough in 1949-50 are already characteristic of these watercolours and pastels…” (Diane Waldman in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Mark Rothko, 1903-1970: a Retrospective, 1978, p. 48). In No. 10, Rothko seeps the oil pigment into the canvas threads as directly as watercolour binds with paper. Several complementary colours are harmoniously balanced within the composition, revealing “one of the supreme features of his genius – his ability to hold on a single plane colours that advance and retreat... Rothko had by now enlarged and neutralised his forms, allowing colour to breathe” (ibid., p. 57). The luscious, warm tones in No. 10 – particularly the red and yellow which are so potent in his later paintings – are almost contradictory to the visual dematerialisation of form and the delicacy of paint application achieved in the Multiforms. Yet, the jewel tones of No. 10 beautifully convey the synthesis Rothko brilliantly achieved in his pure, reductive and transcendent paintings.

馬 克·羅斯科1949年的《10號》色彩璀璨奪目，見證了藝術家在色彩與形式上獨樹一幟的創新融合與突破，奠定了他在二十世紀中期美國抽象藝術的殿堂級地位。具象藝術源自於象徵主義和超現實主義的影響，是羅斯科早期創作的基石。然而，他始終渴望創造屬於自己的風格——這是他對藝術在動盪的現代主義世界中原始而鼓舞人心的作用的個人宣言。在1940年代後期，羅斯科筆下擬人化的形象逐漸消解，變得愈發飄渺輕盈，彷彿漂浮在朦朧的霧氣中，與柔和的背景融為一體。 1948年母親的過世對羅斯科產生了影響，或許正是這段經歷促使他將形體消解，化作純粹沉浸式視覺體驗的斑斕色彩。到了1949年，羅斯科已在其作品中實現光與色彩的完美融合。這幅作品中柔和的紅、黃、橙、綠，預示著他在摒棄線條、敘事和空間透視等傳統繪畫手法的情況下，成功地將形狀與色彩融為一體。這幅名為《10號》的系列畫作被羅斯科命名為《多重形體》（Multiforms），這一標題預示著自由的色調和柔和無定形的形狀在其美學中佔據著舉足輕重的地位。當《10號》在1950年1月於貝蒂·帕森斯畫廊（Betty Parsons Gallery）舉辦的羅斯科個展上展出，他已經開始創作那些及後成為其成熟風格的作品，這些作品也成為了他如今為人熟知的經典傑作。 《10號》以其簡約又奔放的色彩形式，預示著二十世紀年代初期的巨幅畫作的到來。

連同《10號》在內，羅斯科在1948年至1949年風格變化鮮明時期繪畫的作品中，迄今只有九幅畫作曾經亮相拍場。在1950年紐約貝蒂・帕森斯畫廊展覽的十二幅畫作中，《10號》是目前仍為私人收藏的三幅作品之一，另外九幅現藏於美國的大型博物館，包括洛杉磯當代藝術博物館、紐約現代藝術博物館、洛杉磯縣藝術博物館、明尼阿波利斯沃克藝術中心、華盛頓特區美國國家美術館、華盛頓赫希洪博物館和雕塑園、紐約瓦薩學院法蘭西絲·立木·洛布藝術中心。2026年3月14日至8月23日，意大利佛羅倫斯的斯特羅茲宮為羅斯科舉行大型個展〈 羅斯科在佛羅倫斯〉（Rothko in Florence），展覽由羅斯科的兒子克里斯托弗・羅斯科和獨立策展人伊琳娜・蓋納策劃，場上亦展出1950年貝蒂・帕森斯畫廊展覽十二幅畫作中的三幅。

《10號》曾屬約瑟夫·曼弗雷德·布蘭斯坦（Joseph Manfred Bransten）舊藏，他是舊金山知名藝術贊助人，1961年至1972年曾任榮譽軍團博物館的董事會成員，直至該館與迪揚美術館合併成三藩市美術館。此後他繼續擔任新館的董事會成員，並於1972年至離世前積極參與購藏委員會事務。迪揚美術館收藏了另一幅與《10號》風格類近的羅斯科早年作品，創作時間比《第10號》早一年。

僅五年前，羅斯科的藝術生涯開啟了新的篇章。 1945年1月，他在佩吉·古根漢的〈本世紀藝術展〉上舉辦了首次個展，隨後在1946年，他的作品入選惠特尼美國藝術博物館年度展，並在舊金山現代藝術博物館舉辦了個人展覽。在1940年代後期，羅斯科與威廉·巴齊奧特斯、羅伯特·馬瑟韋爾、巴內特·紐曼等藝術家結下了深厚的友誼，並與他們志趣相投。尤其克里夫・斯蒂。羅斯科從斯蒂那裡汲取了創作靈感，並開始使用數字為作品命名，《多形體》系列中的《10號》則為一例。在貝蒂·帕森斯的展覽中，羅斯科的十二幅作品按照藝術家選擇的順序編號為1到12，並沿著畫廊主展廳逆時針方向排列。之後，羅斯科也開始採用類似的編號方式，每年的第一幅畫作都從1號開始。

放棄現實具象的標題只是羅斯科、斯蒂和紐曼共同摒棄以符號為繪畫中心的眾多方面之一，他們試圖通過將審美元素簡化到最基本的本質來淨化藝術。正如羅斯科在1949年發表的《關於其繪畫態度的聲明》中所述，「畫家作品的演進，隨著時間的推移，將朝著清晰的方向發展；朝著消除畫家與理念之間所有障礙的方向發展。」（馬克·羅斯科，《關於其繪畫態度的聲明》，《虎眼》，第9期，1949年10月，第114頁）。

羅斯科在1940年代中期創作的一系列水彩畫中首次實現了色彩與光線的藝術融合。在1978年羅斯科回顧展的文章中，黛安‧沃爾德曼探討了這些紙上作品與《多重形體》系列之間的關聯。她指出，「羅斯科在1949-50年間取得重大突破時所展現的明亮度、平面性、正面性和相近的色彩，在這些水彩畫和粉彩畫中已經初見端倪……」（黛安·沃爾德曼，紐約，所羅門·R·古根海姆博物館，《馬克·羅斯科1903-1970：回顧展》展覽圖錄，1978年，第48頁）。在《10號》作品中，羅斯科將油畫顏料直接滲入畫布纖維，如同水彩顏料與紙張結合一般。畫面中幾種互補色和諧平衡，展現了「他天賦的至高特徵之一——他能夠將進退自如的色彩保持在同一平面上……此時的羅斯科已經放大並弱化了形體，讓色彩得以呼吸」（同上，第57頁）。《10號》中濃鬱溫暖的色調——尤其是他後期畫作中極具張力的紅色和黃色——幾乎與《多重形體》系列中對形體的視覺消解和細膩的筆觸形成鮮明對比。然而，《10號》作品中寶石般的色調卻完美地傳達了羅斯科在其純粹、簡約而超凡脫俗的畫作中所達到的卓越境界。