Mark Rothko: life and works

Mark Rothko (), born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (Russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, Latvian: Markuss Rotkovičs; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was an American abstract painter of Latvian Jewish descent. He is best known for his color showground paintings that depicted abnormal and painterly rectangular regions of color, which he produced from 1949 to 1970.

Rothko did not personally subscribe to any one school; however, he is united with the American Abstract Expressionist leisure interest of protester art. Originally emigrating to Portland, Oregon from Russia once his family, Rothko sophisticated moved to New York City where his youth period of artistic production dealt primarily once urban scenery. In acceptance to World War II, Rothko’s art entered a transitional phase during the 1940s, where he experimented subsequent to mythological themes and Surrealism to circulate tragedy. Toward the end of the decade Rothko painted canvases once regions of resolved color which he supplementary abstracted into rectangular color forms, the idiom he would use for the dismount of his life.

In his well along career Rothko executed several canvases for three alternative mural projects. The Seagram murals were to have bejeweled the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building, but Rothko eventually grew disgusted with the idea that his paintings would be decorative objects for rich diners and refunded the lucrative commission, donating the paintings to museums including the Tate Modern. The Harvard Mural series was clever to a dining room in Harvard’s Holyoke Center (now Smith Campus Center); their colors faded atrociously over times due to Rothko’s use of the pigment Lithol Red together subsequently regular sunlight exposure. The Harvard series has before been restored using a special lighting technique. Rothko contributed 14 canvases to a unshakable installation at the Rothko Chapel, a non-denominational chapel in Houston, Texas.

Although Rothko lived modestly for much of his life, the resale value of his paintings grew tremendously in the decades gone his suicide in 1970.