A child last Monday damaged a picture of the American artist Mark Rothko exhibited at the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Róterdam (Netherlands) and valued at 50 million euros, according to the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (AD).
As explained on Wednesday from the museum to Efe, the work “Gray, orange on Brown, No. 8” suffered damage after the child touched it while exposed, which caused “small scratches in the paint of paint without varnishing from the bottom of the painting.”
In addition, as they explained, conservation experts are currently being sought in the Netherlands and foreign countries and the steps to carry out the painting are being investigated, so restoration work has not yet been initiated.
“We hope that the work can be exposed again in the future,” they said.
Boijmans Van Beuningen did not provide information on the possible costs associated with the conservation of the work and said that it will not disseminate images of the damage.
The incident occurred in a “moment of carelessness,” according to a spokesman for the Museum to the local radio station RTV Rijnmond.
The abstract work was acquired by Boijmans in 1970 and is one of the two Rothko paintings that are part of the Dutch collections of the museum and one of its most valuable pieces, with an estimated value of between 40 and 50 million euros.
Mark Rothko (1903-1970), one of the greatest representatives of abstract expressionism, stood out for his painting in color fields and dedicated his career to express universal emotions, such as ecstasy or tragedy.
The person in charge of conservation of the fine art restorration company, Sophie Mcaloone, said in statements to the BBC that the “modern paintings without varnish”, such as this “gray, orange on brown, No. 8” (gray, orange on garnet, nº8), are “especially susceptible to suffering damage.”
The work was not varnished
He indicated that this is due to “a combination of its complex modern materials, the lack of a layer of traditional varnish and the intensity of flat colored fields, which make even the smallest damage of damage perceptible instantly.”
“In this case, the scratch of the upper paint layers can have a significant impact on the visual experience of the work,” said Mcaloone.
In addition, according to some experts, restoring a work by this artist is a difficult job because “the mixture of Rothko pigments, resins and tails was quite complex”, and to the fact that the picture is not varnished.
Interestingly, it is not the first time that an artist’s picture suffers an incident, since in 2012 Rothko’s work of 1958 “Black on Garnet” was damaged in an act of vandalism of Wlodzimierz Umaniec in the Tate Modern Gallery (London).
The conservatives were repairing the picture and the person in charge was sentenced to two years in prison, although later apologized for their actions.
The (EFE)
