‘Untitled‘, Mark Rothko, 1969 | Tate

Untitled belongs to a series of works on paper that are often referred to as the Brown and Gray series. These paintings are characterised by a colour field divided into two unequal areas. In each case the darker tone is positioned above the lighter tone, a configuration Rothko imposed to prevent the works from being read as landscapes. The Brown and Gray paintings on paper anticipate the 1969–70 Black on Gray works, a series of around twenty-five paintings on canvas that formed the last major group Rothko made before his death. Rothko employed similar tones and configurations in this final series, but whereas in the paper works the white margin was created by the removal of masking tape, in the works on canvas he painted against a white canvas and, according to critic Brian O’Doherty ‘abandoned a life-long habit of “turning the corner”, of painting around the edge of the stretcher to give the canvas enough objectness to hold its place on the wall’. (Brian O’Doherty, Mark Rothko: The Dark Paintings 1969–70, exhibition catalogue, Pace Gallery, New York 1985, p.6.)