Rothko, Mark

Rothko, Mark (1903-1970), American painter, of the Abstract Expressionist school. Rothko, whose original surname was Rothkovich, was born in Dvinsk, Russia (now Daugavpils, Latvia), and was brought to the United States in 1913. He later attended Yale University and studied briefly at the Art Students League in New York but was largely self-taught as an artist. He had his first one-man show in New York in 1933. Rothko's work in the 1930s espoused the social realist movement. In the 1940s, influenced by Surrealism, he developed a more imaginative approach that drew on primitive religion, as, for example, Baptismal Scene (1945, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). Gradually his work became abstract, consisting of large, hazily defined rectangles of colour—murky, delicate, or glowing—used to convey emotion. They belong to the colour-field branch of Abstract Expressionism. Examples include Number 10 (1950, Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Four Darks in Red (1958, Whitney Museum of American Art).

For several years after his death, Rothko's estate was the subject of legal dispute. His executors were accused of selling his works to Marlborough Galleries, New York, at prices disadvantageous to his heirs. In 1975 a Manhattan surrogate court removed the executors, fining them and the gallery $9,252,000.