Mark Rothko

Born in Russia, Mark Rothko immigrated to the United States with his family in 1913. Twelve years later he moved to New York City and began his career as an artist. Rothko’s earliest paintings are compelling in their duality. They are representational, but also somewhat abstract. Many of them depict anonymous figures caught in the powerful grids of urban architecture. Using abstract fields of color, Rothko shifted his practice to pursue themes and forms that he understood to be more universal. Like Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) for example, Rothko turned from contemporary scenes to the timeless scenarios of ancient myth and pure abstraction to develop a vocabulary of colorful biomorphic shapes. Throughout the 1940s, Rothko progressively simplified and intensified the symbolic language of his painting: one or more rounded rectangles of color set above a large monochromatic field. After settling on this compositional format in 1949, he continued to use it until his death in 1970. Although seemingly strict, this format enabled Rothko’s continual and passionate invention, as he varied color, canvas size, painting technique, and exhibition setting.