Monet/Rothko

Recent research on Late Impressionism has highlighted the unexpected correspondences between the work of Impressionist Claude Monet and that of abstract painters such as Mark Rothko. This book, conceived to accompany an exhibition at the Musees des Impressionnismes Giverny and illustrated with sixty chromatically organized reproductions, offers an unprecedented dialogue between the paintings of Monet and Rothko, two artists who explored the frontiers of abstraction. It juxtaposes the uncanny similarities of their works painted almost half a century apart, as well as the richness of the differences between the master artists’ styles.

Monet conveyed the immediacy of his impressions of nature, while Rothko plunged the spectator into the depths of colors that he superimposed and interwove. And yet, this book reveals an undeniable relationship between their pictorial universes, challenging the viewer’s perception of abstraction and modernity. This confrontation, contextualized through the analysis of renowned critics, sheds new light on the work of two of the greatest masters of painting, and offers fresh insight onto the essence of what makes their works so inherently original.