Mark Rothko

American · b. 1903

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) was an American painter and a central figure of the New York School whose work transformed the possibilities of abstract painting in the postwar period. After early figurative and Surrealist paintings, Rothko gradually developed increasingly abstract compositions, culminating around 1949 in his signature format of large, softly edged fields of colour suspended against luminous grounds. He conceived painting as an intense emotional and psychological experience, using colour, scale, proportion, and spatial relationships to address fundamental human emotions. Major projects such as the Seagram Murals and the fourteen paintings created for the Rothko Chapel extended this approach into immersive environments in which painting, architecture, light, and the viewer’s physical presence become closely interconnected.