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Mark Rothko
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Mark Rothko (25 September 1903 - 25 February 1970), Russian-born American painter, known for abstract paintings in which soft-edged rectangles of color seem to float weightlessly against undefined backgrounds. A major figure in the abstract expressionism movement, Marcus Rothkowitz, as he was born, used color to convey a range of emotion and what the artist described as a religious experience.
Rothko attended Yale University on a scholarship from 1921 to 1923. That year, he left Yale without receiving a degree and moved to New York. In 1925, he studied under Max Weber at the Art Students League. He participated in his first group exhibition at the Opportunity Galleries, New York, in 1928.
In the early 1940s, he worked closely with Gottlieb, developing a painting style with mythological content, simple flat shapes, and imagery inspired by primitive art. By mid-decade, his work incorporated Surrealist techniques and images. Peggy Guggenheim gave Rothko a solo show at Art of This Century in New York in 1945.
In '47 and '49, Rothko taught at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco. The late 1940s and early 1950s saw the emergence of Rothko's mature style, in which frontal, luminous rectangles seem to hover on the canvas surface.
Although he had established a reputation and respect from the public, Rothko was still unhappy. He often said that he felt "trapped and restless." In 1967 he began to increasingly become more depressed and a year later he suffered from an aneurysm of the aorta. During the last few years he began to paint more with bright colors despite his mood. Still, things got no better and he felt as though his life was deteriorating. Consequently, in his New York Studio, he took his life in February 1970.
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