Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko was an American painter and a leading figure of Abstract Expressionism, known for large canvases of glowing, floating rectangles of color. Born in Russia in 1903 and raised in the United States, he spent years painting figures and myths before arriving at the stacked bands of color that made him famous. He wanted these simple forms to carry deep human feeling.

He insisted his work was not about color for its own sake but about big emotions like tragedy, ecstasy, and doom, and he hoped viewers would stand close and be enveloped. He created somber, meditative rooms of paintings meant almost like places of worship. Rothko struggled with depression and died in 1970. His shimmering fields of color remain some of the most moving images in modern art.