{"id":1936473,"date":"2026-05-14T22:48:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T19:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1936473"},"modified":"2026-05-14T22:48:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T19:48:00","slug":"the-most-expensive-works-by-mark-rothko-sold-at-auction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1936473","title":{"rendered":"The Most Expensive Works by Mark Rothko Sold at Auction"},"content":{"rendered":"
Mark Rothko\u2019s abstractions, recognizable for their rectangularly shaped floating forms and thin washes of color, have been said by critics and historians to invoke the metaphysical. The Russian-American painter relied on these formal elements to imbue his canvases with grand meaning. He famously remarked his works comprise the basic tenets of human feeling: \u201ctragedy, ecstasy, doom.\u201d<\/p>\n
The artist is remembered for his disdain for the art establishment as well. Though Rothko rejected associations with the art market\u2019s elite during his lifetime, his paintings have long attracted some of the wealthiest patrons around the globe. In the late 1950s, Rothko produced a series of deep-red murals for the Seagram Building in Manhattan, commissioned by the Bronfman family who owned the historic hotel. The deal fell through when the artist decried the venue for its steep prices, but the works produced for the series went on to become some of the most well-known of his career. Several now reside on view at the Tate in London. The following decade, Texan mega-collectors John and Dominique de Menil assembled a collection of 14 monumental works by the Abstract Expressionist that would line the walls of the now-famed Rothko Chapel in Houston. In 2021, that beloved space reopened after a $30 million restoration.<\/p>\n
Now as then, Rothko\u2019s works command some of the highest prices on the market. In May 2026, for example, when dealer Robert Mnuchin\u2019s collection came to auction at Sotheby\u2019s in New York, Rothko\u2019s 1957 painting Brown and Blacks in Reds\u00a0<\/em>was given a $70 million\u2013$100 million estimate. While the painting narrowly failed to re-set Rothko\u2019s record, it did make a healthy $85.8 million.<\/p>\n
Below, a list of Rothko\u2019s top auction prices.<\/p>\n
This article first published in 2021. It was updated on May 14, 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n
In May 2014, Rothko\u2019s 1962 untitled canvas soared past its $40 million estimate during a Christie\u2019s New York evening sale, realizing $66.2 million. The eight-and-a-half-foot-tall painting, featuring fields of violet, orange, and burgundy, went to a client on the phone with Christie\u2019s Asia specialist Xin Li. Just days later, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen sold another Rothko from 1955 with a blue and orange scheme at Phillips for $56.2 million.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
\n\n
White center (Yellow, pink and lavender on rose)<\/em>, 1950<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: AP Photos\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
Sold for: $72.8 million<\/strong><\/p>\n
In May 2007, Sotheby\u2019s sold White center (Yellow, pink and lavender on rose)<\/em> for $72.8 million. It had come to auction from the collection of David Rockefeller, who held onto the painting for nearly five decades. He had purchased it from New York\u2019s Sidney Janis Gallery in 1960 for less than $10,000, which at the time was no small sum for a work for a living artist. (The year afterward, Rothko\u2019s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art cemented the artist\u2019s status as one of the day\u2019s foremost Abstract Expressionists.) The six-and-a-half-foot-tall work was bought by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani and his wife Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned. Unlike Rothko\u2019s deeper-hued works from his later period, White center<\/em> has a more vibrant color scheme, with the canvas divided into horizontal bands that appear more often in his earlier works.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
\n\n
No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue)<\/em>, 1954<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Sotheby’s\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
Sold for: $75 million<\/strong><\/p>\n
In November 2012, No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue)<\/em> from 1954 sold for $75.1 million at a Sotheby\u2019s evening sale in New York. The price far exceeded the pre-sale estimate of $35 million. Before coming to sale, it passed through the hands of esteemed dealer Richard Feigen and New York collector Ben Heller. The canvas is one of eight the artist selected for his solo show in 1954 at the Art Institute of Chicago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
In May 2015, Rothko\u2019s No. 10\u00a0<\/em>(1950) sold for $81.9 million during Christie\u2019s postwar and contemporary art evening sale in New York. The 1958 painting, which Rothko completed as part of the Seagram building commission, features dark orange forms hovering over a black background, appearing to give it a haloed effect. During the late 1950s, Rothko began to move away from vibrant hues of his earlier paintings and towards a more austere palette. \u201cHe seemed to be saying in these new foreboding works, that he was never painting luxe, calme and volupt\u00e9, if we had only know it,\u201d critic Dore Ashton once wrote. At Christie\u2019s, the painting surpassed its $45 million estimate, hammering for a price of $73 million after several bidders competed for it. The anonymous American seller purchased it in 1986 from Pace Gallery.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
\n\n
Brown and Blacks in Reds<\/em>, 1957<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy Sotheby’s\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
Sold for: $85.8 million<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n\tThis was one of the most expensive works to come to auction during the May 2026 auction season in New York, and it did not fail to meet expectations, even if it didn\u2019t quite make the record some had hoped for. It came to sale from the collection of Robert Mnuchin, the investment banker\u2013turned\u2013art dealer who led an Upper East Side gallery under his name and died before the year that Sotheby\u2019s auctioned this painting. This Rothko was shown at Sidney Janis Gallery before being bought by the Seagram company, which hung it in the lobby of its New York office. Then, in 2003, the company, now under the ownership of the conglomerate Vivendi, sold the work at Christie\u2019s for $6.7 million. That means the painting is now worth 12 times as much as it once was.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
In May 2012, Orange, red, yellow<\/em> (1961) sold for $86.9 million when it went under the hammer at Christie\u2019s in New York. During the sale, the painting soared past its $45 million high estimate. The result surpassed the previous record price for a postwar work on the the open market, narrowly outpacing Sotheby\u2019s 2008 sale of a Francis Bacon triptych for $86.3 million. Alongside works from Rothko\u2019s peers, among them Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Clyfford Still, the painting was sold from the collection of Philadelphia retailer David Pincus, which brought in a collected $174.9 million. Pincus had held onto the work for more than four decades; he took out a loan in 1967 to purchase it from Marlborough Gallery.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Rothko-e1632761738617.jpg?w=1024″] Mark Rothko\u2019s abstractions, recognizable for their rectangularly shaped floating forms and thin washes of color, have been said by critics and historians to invoke the metaphysical. The Russian-American painter relied on these formal elements to imbue his canvases with grand meaning. He famously remarked his works comprise the basic tenets of human […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1936473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1936473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1936473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1936473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1936473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Screen-Shot-2021-09-28-at-12.49.25-PM-e1632852934122.png?w=400\")
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Rothko-1-e1632851166102.jpg?w=400\")
![](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Screen-Shot-2021-09-28-at-12.48.15-PM-e1632849447766.png?w=400\")
![](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Screen-Shot-2021-09-28-at-12.54.36-PM.png?w=400\")
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Mark-Rothko-Brown-and-Blacks-in-Reds-1957.jpg?w=400\")
![\"Christie's\"](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Christies-e1632847387349.jpeg?w=400\")