Mark Rothkos famous “Seagram” murals are back home at the Tate Liverpool some two decades after they first appeared there.

Asked to create the paintings for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York, Rothko said that he took the commission with “malicious intentions,” stating at the time, "I hope to paint something that will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room.”

He later changed his mind about the commission, returning the funds that had been sent to him, and donating the completed works to the Tate just before his death. Museum officials say that the nine works first arrived at the museum on the day his suicide was announced in 1970.They were part of the Tate Liverpool's opening exhibition in 1988.

The series takes its name from the Seagram Building in Manhattan’s midtown area, where the Four Seasons is housed. The Seagram Building was a joint project between German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and American Philip Johnson, who were also responsible for the restaurant’s design.

Read more at the Liverpool Daily Post.