Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz in what is today Daugavpils, Latvia. He immigrated to the United States when he was ten years old, and his family settled in Portland, Oregon. He went to Yale University in 1921, with a view to studying engineering, but late in 1923 he moved to New York, where he began studying art. He studied with Mark Weber, but was mostly self-taught.

In the 1930s, he taught art to children while doing his own work, which consisted of mostly street scenes or interiors with figures. His work reflected the strain of life during the great Depression.

In the 1940s his imagery became more symbolic. He was greatly influenced by the Surrealists, who used artistic creativity as a key to unlocking the unconscious and was also interested in the work of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist. Another influence was the work of Henri Matisse, in his desire to sacrifice line for color, and limit his palette. Figurative elements disappeared from his work, and used multiform compositions with patches of color, which were arranged asymmetrically. Rothko would use two or three vertical rectangles of color with indistinct edges, thus blurring the division between shapes and ground. He gave up conventional titles, using numbers or colors instead, as he did not feel the need to explain the meaning of his work, which he felt was meditative in nature. He did not want to be seen merely as a colorist, but wanted to express basic human emotions through color. He linked luminosity, space, darkness and color contrast to tragedy, ecstasy and the sublime.

Between 1964 and 1967, Rothko worked on paintings for the Rothko Chapel, originally commissioned by the University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas. During his last few years, he became ill and severely depressed, and committed suicide in February 1970.