Mark Rothko is an artist who is known for his paintings that reflect abstract expressionism. But yesterday someone else decided to express their own movement on one of his paintings. Rothko’s work is being shown at the Tate Modern, London and a photo of the vandalism was posted on Twitter. The vandalism looked like this -

Vladimir Umanets ’12 – A potential piece of Yellowism

The painting “Black on Maroon” (1958) which has been vandalised is said to be worth millions of pounds but the Tate has assessed the damage and think they will successfully be able to restore it back to the original look.

A man named Vladimir Umanets has claimed he is responsible for the damage, but believes it is not vandalism. He is also co-founder of a movement called “Yellowism”, he obviously didn’t like this painting because it didn’t contain any yellow! The 20-year old did the graffitti using a black marker pen at around 15:25 pm. At this time the Tate Modern was in lock down and nobody was allowed in or out until the criminal had been found.

We expect that this unusual crime will see a lot more restrictions on viewing art in galleries.