Telling the story of Mark Rothko, describing the path of this nomadic artist, born in Lithuania into a Jewish family and soon emigrated to the United States where in 1940 he changed his name from Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz to the one by which he is universally known today, Rothko, the artist abstract par excellence. This is the objective of the major exhibition organized by the Fondation Louis Vuitton from 18 October 2023 and which brings together for the first time in Paris, after 24 years, 115 works from the most important international collections, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Tate in London, the Phillips Collection and the artist's family. Extraordinary works such as those commissioned for the famous Four Seasons restaurant designed by Philip Johnson for the Seagram Building, whose construction Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was supervising in New York, and which at the last moment Rothko decided to remove from that original destination - too elitist and chic for his tastes and for the morals of a poor Jewish emigrant for whom spending more than 5 dollars on a meal was an unacceptable disgrace - to donate the nine most beautiful ones to the Tate Gallery in London eleven years later. Or the famous Rothko Chapel, the non-denominational chapel commissioned by John and Dominique de Menil in Houston and inaugurated in 1971. Or finally the Black and Gray series from 1969-1970 which will be brought together in the exhibition and compared with the thread-like sculptures of Alberto Giacometti in the highest room of the Parisian building designed by Frank Gehry.
