mark rothko // biography (1903-1970) / gallery / prints

//Biog.//

Leninimports.com

//MARK ROTHKO//

Known as: American abstract expressionist painter

Born: September 25, 1903, Daugavpils, Latvia

Birthname: Marcus Rothkowitz

Height: 5'10"

Date of death: February 25, 1970, New York, US (suicide)

Buried: East Marion Cemetery, East Marion, Suffolk County, New York, USA

Mark Rothko, an American Jewish painter, is chiefly known today for his huge and beautiful abstract pictures with horizontal bands of colour melting into one another. Colours that are oblique at the edges but are so deep that you can almost drown in them.

He was born in Latvia in 1903, then part of the Russian Empire, but went to America in 1913. He started painting in 1926 with a clear influence being Surrealism in his early work. It was quite different to the later work which Rothko built his reputation on, with more movement and swirling imagery.

Until 1940, he was known as Marcus Rothkovich, but because of a fear of the rise of Nazi sympathy in the US and the thought of deportation for European Jews, not only did he change it to Mark Rothko in that year but became an American citizen.

His first one-man show was at the Portland Museum in 1933 when he was 29.

He was married twice, firstly to Edith Sachar, a successful jewelry designer, and secondly to Mary Alice Beistle, an illustrator of children’s books.

His last studio at 157 East 69th Street, New York.

After suffering long-term from depresion, Rothko committed sicide in 1970 by cutting his wrists. He was 66.

As of July 2006, the record price paid for a Rothko painting is $22.5 million US dollars for Homage to Matisse.

Selected Works: