Mark Rothko
Born in Latvia in 1903, Mark Rothko became one of America's most influential and provocative painters. His Jewish family emigrated to the United States in 1913 and settled in Portland, Oregon. Rothko studied at Yale but never competed his degree. He moved to New York City in 1924 to begin a career in painting. His first major influence was from Max Weber at the Art Students League. Rothko's early work portrayed street scenes and people, emphasizing shapes more than specifics and personalities. His first solo exhibit, in 1933, also included nudes, portraits, and landscapes. By the 1940s, Rothko began a movement to more symbolic paintings, taking his inspiration from mythology. These dreamlike works became more and more abstract. By 1950, Rothko had arrived at a style and approach that would identify his work for the next twenty years. The paintings of floating rectangles against a canvas-soaked color would provide a new relationship to abstract art. These works were as deeply personal as they were intense. Rothko considered these works to capture the "human drama." The abstract nature of the shapes and colors were meant to create an immediate, and deep, emotional impact on the viewer. Rothko stopped giving his paintings and drawings individual titles and simply dated and numbered them in order to identify individual works. By the early 1960s, Rothko’s paintings began to sell to collectors for significant sums, which is still true today. In 2005, Rothko's Homage to Matisse set a sales record for a post World War II painting at $22.5 million. John and Dominique de Menil commissioned Rothko to paint panels for a new Roman Catholic chapel in Houston. The project was fraught with conflict between Rothko and the original architect Philip Johnson. Johnson quit the project, and was replaced with local architects. For Rothko this work was to be the most important work of his legacy, a spiritual connection to art. The strain on his failing physical and mental health was immense. Rothko would never see the completion of the chapel. He committed suicide on February 25, 1970. The chapel was dedicated as the Rothko Chapel in 1971.
