Mark Rothko (1903 –1970) American painter of Russian Jewish descent. He is generally identified as an Abstract Expressionist. With Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, he is one of the most famous postwar American artists. Emigrated with his family to Portland, Oregon, in 1913. Studied the liberal arts at Yale University 1921-3. Moved in 1925 to New York and studied for a short time at the Art Students League under Max Weber, then began to paint on his own. Taught at Center Academy, Brooklyn, 1929-52. First one-man exhibition at the Portland Art Museum 1933. In the 1930s painted pictures influenced by Milton Avery and Matisse, with simplified compositions and flat areas of colour; co-founder in 1935 with Gottlieb and others of The Ten, a group of Expressionist tendency. In association with Gottlieb, worked in a Surrealist idiom 1942-7, drawing upon the myths of antiquity as Jungian archetypes, and making watercolours and oils with calligraphic, biomorphic imagery related to Ernst and Miró, and horizontal zones of misty colour. Turned to complete abstraction in 1947, with large soft-edged areas of colour, adopting by 1950 a symmetrical presentation. From the mid 50s onwards, having several periods of depression, he would often use darker colors, culminating with the hue-colored black paintings that he has done for the Rothko Chapel project. The chapel is finished in 1971, one year after his death.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 06:40:13 +0000
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