Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko was a Latvian-born American painter who became one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism. Born Marcus Rothkowitz in 1903, he immigrated to the United States as a child and eventually settled in New York. By the late 1940s he'd stripped away figuration entirely, arriving at his signature format: large canvases with two or three soft-edged rectangles of luminous color stacked vertically.

Rothko insisted his paintings weren't about color or form. He wanted viewers to experience basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom. He preferred his work hung in dimly lit rooms at close range, filling the viewer's entire field of vision. His late paintings grew darker, shifting from radiant oranges and yellows to deep maroons, blacks, and grays. Our collection includes 6 works by Rothko, displayed at institutions including Tate Modern in London.