Orange, Red, Yellow

Working in oil on canvas, Mark Rothko painted this Orange, Red, Yellow in 1961, creating one of his most luminous Color Field compositions. The canvas, over two meters tall, presents warm vermillion rectangles floating over a cooler crimson ground, their edges hovering slightly from the canvas perimeter. The colors seem to pulse and shift as viewers stare.

Rothko built this radiant effect through thin, translucent layers of pigment carefully applied using a technique he kept secret even from studio assistants. He intended his large-scale works to envelop viewers, evoking emotional responses he compared to Greek tragedy or religious experience. The chromatic afterimage created by staring at one color affects perception of the adjacent hues.

The painting came from the collection of David Pincus, who had acquired it directly. At Christie's in May 2012, it sold for $86.9 million, setting a record for post-war contemporary art at public auction and nearly doubling the presale estimate.