Rothko and I in Florence

Mark Rothko has come home to Italy, and I've just been to see 'him'.

The Rothko in Florence exhibition brings over 70 of his works to three venues in the historic centre of Firenze. It runs until 23 August 2026. The main retrospective sits at Palazzo Strozzi. Two satellite shows run at the Museo di San Marco and at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. Each venue needs its own ticket.

I've loved his work for years. My late sister Sam and I would stand for hours in front of his paintings at the Tate Modern in London, absorbed by those floating colours. She is the reason I first paid proper attention to him. Going to this show without her, but somehow with her, was always going to be a deep one.

 

PALAZZO STROZZI

I went on the Thursday late opening. The exhibition stays open until 23:00 that night and the rooms were quiet. Fewer voices. More space to look. If you can choose your day, choose Thursday evening.

The show traces his whole career, from the early figurative work and surrealist period through to the great colour fields most people know him for. Seeing it all together changed how I read him. The early paintings are not a warm-up. They contain everything that comes later. You watch a man move from describing the world to feeling it.

 

I also understood, properly, why his work has shaped my own. We share Italy. We share a meditative presence. We share the belief that colour is a feeling before it is a description.

There is a detail I had not fully taken in before. Rothko spent time in Florence in the 1950s studying Renaissance frescoes. The scale, the still walls of pigment, the rooms that hold you quiet. You can see all of it absorbed and carried into his later work.

MUSEO DI SAN MARCO

The next morning I walked over to San Marco. This was the venue I had been most curious about.

Rothko visited this Dominican convent in 1950 and again in 1966. Fra Angelico painted his frescoes directly onto the walls of the friars' cells in the 1440s. They are some of the most quietly devotional paintings in Europe.

The curators have placed Rothko's paintings inside those same cells, next to the frescoes. It should not work. It does. Both painters are doing the same thing five hundred years apart. They are using colour to make a space for prayer.

I stood in one of the cells for a long time. A small Rothko on one wall, a Fra Angelico on the other. Reds, pinks, gold. Nothing else needed.

 

BIBLIOTECA MEDICEA LAURENZIANA

I tried twice to get into the third venue and missed it both times. The studies for the Seagram Murals are shown in the library vestibule designed by Michelangelo. It opens Monday to Friday only, 10:00 to 13:30, and the window closes before lunch. A reason to go back before August.

PLANNING YOUR OWN VISIT

A few practical things if you are thinking of going:

Book the Thursday evening slot at Palazzo Strozzi if you can. The crowds are thinner and the work needs the space.

Do not skip the early rooms at Palazzo Strozzi. The figurative paintings are where the later colour fields begin.

The pairing at San Marco is worth the whole trip on its own. Allow real time there. It closes on Mondays.

If you want all three venues, plan for two days and check the Laurenziana hours before you book. It is closed at weekends.

Buy your Palazzo Strozzi ticket first. It gets you a discount at the two satellite venues.

WHAT I CAME HOME WITH

I came home with colour in my body and a clearer sense of why I paint the way I do.

Sam would have loved this. I felt her with me in front of every painting.

 

If you are anywhere near Florence between now and 23 August 2026, go.

You can see how colour and the female form sit at the centre of my own paintings in the Trilogy of Liberation.

Roberta xx