Focus: Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko

Several times each year The Museum of Modern Art, New York mounts exhibitions whose titles begin with "Focus." Small in scale and comprised of works from MoMA's own collection, the Focus series enables the viewer to do exactly that: to focus--on a single artist, medium, period of time, theme or contrast.

Focus: Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko displays these painters' works created between the late 1940s and the early 1960s. Viewing the group, it is clear that both artists were experimenting with color-as-composition (unlike some of their New York School kin), but were going down two entirely different paths. The exhibition was organized by Elizabeth Reede, Assistant Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, and contains 11 large-scale paintings (five by Reinhardt and six by Rothko). Here is a sample of six of the works; a treat for armchair art aficionados, courtesy of MoMA.