Rothko in Florence, exhibition views, Palazzo Strozzi, San Marco Museum, Laurentian Library, Florence, 2026. Photo Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio
On the occasion of the major retrospective “Rothko in Florence” scheduled at the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation in Florence until 23 August, one of the most emblematic playlists of the Play-Art series also returns, the editorial project that intertwines visual art and soundscapes through musical compilations inspired by the great protagonists of art history.
The appointment with Mark Rothko brings to the foreground an artist who transformed color into an emotional experience, constructing pictorial surfaces that seem to breathe in space. It is precisely this suspended, almost meditative dimension that has suggested the new musical selection developed by WECB together with the art magazine Hestetika.art: a sound journey that tries to translate the chromatic vibrations and internal tensions of his canvases into music.
The playlist was in fact born as a sensitive response to Rothko's painting. His large fields of color, crossed by minimal variations and almost atmospheric depths, evoke dilated rhythms, environmental textures, electronic drifts and compositions capable of working on the perception of time. Not a simple soundtrack, but a sequence of resonances: songs that reflect the same tension between stillness and emotional vertigo that runs through his painting.
The listing drawn up this week by the editorial teams of the two magazines takes shape precisely from these suggestions. The expert selectors have built a musical itinerary that arises from the observation of the works of the artist of Jewish-Lithuanian origin, allowing sound atmospheres capable of dialogue with his famous chromatic backgrounds to emerge.
Here are our musical inspirations…
THE PLAYLIST
photo: Untitled (Blue Divided by Blue) – Mark Rothko – Date: 1966
THE EXHIBITION
Until 23 August 2026, the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation presents Rothko in Florence, one of the largest exhibitions ever dedicated in Italy to Mark Rothko, a central figure of twentieth-century art. Curated by Christopher Rothko and Elena Geuna, the exhibition brings together over seventy works from important international collections and museums such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate in London, the Center Pompidou in Paris and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Designed specifically for the Renaissance spaces of Palazzo Strozzi, the exhibition reconstructs the artist's entire creative arc, from his figurative debut in the Thirties and Forties to the famous abstract canvases of his maturity.
The itinerary highlights the progressive transformation of Rothko's pictorial language: from the still narrative compositions, crossed by expressionist and surrealist suggestions, up to the large suspended chromatic fields that will become the hallmark of his research.
INFO
Rothko in Florence Florence Palazzo Strozzi 14 March – 23 August 2026 www.palazzostrozzi.org
