We are in the Renaissance halls of Palazzo Strozzi for the opening of what he describes, in no uncertain terms, as ‘the exhibition of Mark Rothko’s dreams’. This is not a press office cliché, but a confession that comes after years of work and a lifetime devoted to deciphering the silence of a man who was ‘a master of the spiritual in art, a giant of modern art’. Christopher gazes silently at one of the large canvases. 'When Mark Rothko died by taking his own life, I was only six years old, and my tangible, personal memories are obviously very few, but I will always carry within me the spiritual legacy of a man who, throughout his entire existence, was deeply intertwined with his own work.’

As we walk through the galleries, which until 23 August bring together over four decades of work by the great philosopher of abstract painting, Christopher stops. He says: ‘This is the last one I’ll curate in this way, with this level of involvement. It’s all here. I’m sure he’s watching us from up there,’ he adds with a smile, ‘and I think he’d be very happy.’

The idea for this retrospective, conceived in collaboration with Elena Geuna following five years of research, stems from a clear vision: ‘We wanted to present Rothko’s art in its entirety and, at the same time, situate it within a context that was fundamental to him: the European artistic tradition. We didn’t just want to organise a chronological retrospective, but to recount the dialogue my father always had with the art of the past, and in particular with the city of Florence, which he visited twice.” 

The first visit was in 1950, with little money in his pocket and his wife pregnant with their first child, Kate: it is said that he stayed at the Museum of San Marco, enchanted by Beato Angelico’s frescoes, until closing time, only to return the following day.

Then again in 1966, during a Grand Tour of Italy, by which time he was an established artist. On that occasion, he visited the Laurentian Library: he himself recounts how, whilst working on one of his most famous works, the Seagram Murals, that enclosed and almost suffocating space served as a source of inspiration for him.

Together with Christopher, we retrace his father’s life story: Markus Rotkovič – his real name on the register – was born in 1903 in Dvinsk, in what was then the Russian Empire, into a secular Jewish family. He was the only one to attend the Talmudic school. ‘It fell to him to lead the prayers at his father’s death: he was just a ten-year-old boy; I think that was the last time he recited them,’ his son tells me. In that sentence lies, perhaps, the seed of his entire quest: a sense of the sacred that transcends ritual, a yearning for transcendence that finds no peace in words but in the vibration of space.

And yet, many people think that Rothko began his career as an abstract artist. Christopher shakes his head: ‘In reality, his journey was far more complex. In the 1930s, as we can also see in the exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi, he painted urban scenes, interiors and human figures, but even then his aim was not realism: his aim, his sacred focus, has always been space, the way in which existence vibrates within the environment’. He taught art to the children at the Brooklyn Jewish Center School, ‘a job he adored with all his heart’, and it was precisely from that childlike simplicity that he began to simplify his work. By the mid-1940s, the style we know had matured: irregular fields of intense colour, the Multiforms.

As Christopher confirms, for Rothko, the Italian masters were not mere figures from the past: ‘He felt he was engaging in a dialogue with those artists almost as if they were real-life colleagues. It was only then, after his trips to Italy, that he realised just how emotionally powerful architectural space could be: not creating images to be looked at, but spaces and mental architectures to be entered. Architecture obsessed him.’

As we admire the sketches and preparatory studies on display, Christopher corrects me on a common misconception: ‘Colour is merely one of the tools, not the primary element as has always been claimed. The ultimate aim of his painting has always been to construct a credible space, an emotional space that viewers could become part of, thereby completing the work.’

Christopher then recalls an incident involving the Seagram Murals: when the artist realised they were to be displayed in a luxury restaurant (the Four Seasons, which had in fact commissioned the work), he withdrew the paintings and returned the fee: ‘He felt that those paintings were intended for places of contemplation, almost like temples, not for a mundane space’. Today, part of that body of work is, at the artist’s request, in a gallery he designed at the Tate in London.

As we make our way towards the exit, Christopher reminds me of the importance of silence and physical contact with the canvas: Rothko’s art is an intimate experience to be savoured in person. The exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi, which we might describe as chronological and chromatic, begins with his ‘Rembrandt-style’ self-portrait, continues with figurative and surrealist works, and then moves on to the Multiforms, first in bright orange and yellow tones, then green-blue, before moving on to the garnet-purple of the 1960s and the ‘black and grey’ of his later years, right up to the works on paper, delicate and disarming. ‘It was his “not nothing”, an end that is not an end,’ concludes Christopher Rothko.