Mark Rothko
and anarchist, Mark Rothko.

Mark Rothko
Born Marcus Rothkowitz, 25 September 1903 - Russia, died 25 February 1970 - New York, USA

Marcus Rothkowitz was born to Jewish parents in Czarist Russia on September 25, 1903 in Dvinsk. His father emigrated to America when he was ten.

Having decided to become an artist, he started out painting representational pictures in the Expressionist manner, rendering the drama of contemporary existence in a faceless metropolis. His art then grew freer, in Surrealist-influenced compositions that focus on mythic and biomorphic figures. Finally, in the years between 1949 and his suicide in 1970, he jettisoned representational art altogether and worked solely on the luminous fields – mostly in red and black - for which he became famous.