Rothko Case

The Rothko case was the protracted legal dispute between Kate Rothko, the daughter of the painter Mark Rothko; the painter's estate executors; and the directors of his gallery, Marlborough Fine Art. The revelations in the case of greed, abuses of power and conspiracy by financial interests in the art world were described by the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court of New York state, as "manifestly wrongful and indeed shocking," serving as a cautionary tale for both artists and their gallerists.

The entire Rothko matter involved few litigants, but many counsel, some of them with lengthy professional services over a period from 1971 to 1979. Proceedings included removal of the estate's original executors, setting aside the contracts those executors made with the Marlborough gallery, eliminating the rights of the gallery with respect to its inter vivos contracts with the artist, restoring hundreds of paintings to the artist's estate, removal proceedings to compensate the estate for paintings not returnable to it to the extent of millions of dollars, election proceedings litigating the rights of election by the children against an excessive charitable distribution, contents proceedings construing Mark Rothko's will as to the meaning of the "contents" of the family residence willed to his widow and to her estate and later by the widow's will to Rothko's children, and valuation proceedings for valuing the art, assessed costs, fees, and taxes.

On September 16, 1968, Rothko executed a two-page will, drafted by and its execution supervised by his friend Bernard Reis, an unlicensed law-school graduate and Certified Public Accountant, leaving all of his residual estate to the non-profit Rothko Foundation which Rothko organized shortly before his death.

Five months later on February 21, 1969, Rothko entered into an agreement with Marlborough A.G., a Liechtenstein corporation with international galleries, which provided in part that he agreed "not to sell any works of art for a period of eight years, except to Marlborough A.G. if a supplementary contract is made."

One year later Rothko died by suicide on February 25, 1970, leaving an estate consisting primarily but not entirely of 798 of his paintings. Rothko's wife Mary Alice died of a stroke six months after her husband's demise. Rothko's will was admitted to probate the month following his death, naming his estate executors: Bernard Reis, who had drafted Rothko's will and who became a Marlborough Gallery New York director the month before Rothko died; Theodoros Stamos, a friend and fellow artist represented by Marlborough New York starting in 1971; and Morton Levine, an anthropology professor, unconnected with Marlborough but who had been Rothko's son Christopher's guardian for a short time.

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