Experimental printmaker, lithographer, teacher and author of several books on art, Rothenstein created innovative art techniques. The younger son of Sir William Rothenstein, he studied at Chelsea Polytechnic and the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, 1924-1927.
His first one-man exhibition was at the Matthiesen Gallery in 1938, and was commissioned to paint topographical watercolours of endangered sites in Sussex for the Recording Britain project organised by the Pilgrim Trust 1939-1941.
Rothenstein moved to Great Bardfield, Essex where there was a resident art community. It was here he set up a graphic workshop and made his first print, a lithograph for the first series of School Prints, 1946. He made further lithographs, linocut and etchings between 1948-1953, and monotypes between 1948 and 1950.
His major contribution to printmaking was the development of the relief print using found objects and materials, a subject on which he wrote three books. Rothenstein taught art at Camberwell School of Art London and became Art Fellow at Sheffield University in 1962. He lectured extensively in the USA and was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1977, and Royal Academician in 1984. He was author of Looking at Paintings, 1947 and Linocuts and Woodcuts, 1962.