Rothko/Gottlieb: The Surrealist Years

Preview: written before the show opened

In June 1943 Rothko and Gottlieb sent a joint letter to The New York Times, answering a critic who had dismissed their work. "We favor the simple expression of complex thought," they wrote, and asked for painting that was "tragic and timeless." This show covers the decade they spent trying, 1941 to 1951.

It's the sequel to last year's Realist Years, and the paintings and works on paper cluster around 1942 to 1946, when both men turned to myth and the unconscious in the shadow of the war. Gottlieb packed figures, animals and symbols into the irregular grids of his Pictographs. Rothko went organic: his Gethsemane (1945) tells the story of Christ's last hours without a single figure. If you know Rothko from the soft colour rectangles, this is what came just before them.

It's at 125 Newbury, Arne Glimcher's project space at 395 Broadway in Tribeca, on the corner of Walker Street, not Pace's Chelsea tower. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm.