Mark Rothko: Born: Marcus Rothkowitz on September 25, 1903, Dvinsk, Russia.

Left Russia in 1913 to live in Portland, Oregon.

He attended Yale University, New Haven.

Later, he studied under Max Weber at the Art Students League.

His first solo exhibition was at the Contemporary Arts Gallery(New York) in 1933.

taught at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco.

He took his own life on February 25, 1970. Fearing modern American painting had reached a dead-end, Rothko was intent on exploring subjects other than urban and natural scenes, subjects that would complement his growing concern with form, space and color. The world crisis of war lent this search an immediacy as did his insistence that the new subject matter be of social impact, able to transcend the confines of current political symbols and values. In his important essay, "The Romantics Were Prompted," published in 1949, Rothko observed that the "archaic artist . . . found it necessary to create a group of intermediaries, monsters, hybrids, gods and demigods" in much the same way that modern man found intermediaries in Fascism and the Communist Party. For Rothko, "without monsters and gods, art cannot enact a drama".



Paralumun New Age Village