Untitled (Black on Gray)

“It was Rothko’s euphoric veils of diaphanous pure color that led critics to praise him as a sensualist and a colorist, which pained him because he believed that his champions had lost sight of his serious intentions. For him the canvases enacted a violent battle of opposites—vertical versus horizontal, hot color versus cold—invoking the existential conflicts of modernity. The Black Paintings, begun in the year before the artist’s suicide, confirm Rothko’s belief that his work encompassed tragedy. The desolation of canvases such as Untitled (Black on Grey), drained of color and choked by a white border—rather than suggesting the free-floating forms or veiled layers of his earlier work—indicate that, as Rothko asserted, his paintings are about death.”

- Jennifer Blessing From the Guggenheim website