ROTHKO, Mark

Born in Russia, raised in Portland, Oregon, Rothko came to New York in 1925 and was for decades one among many serious painters struggling in New York. Finally, in the 1950s, he realized his original, mature style of large hand-shaped rectangles, usually stacked one above the other, together filling nearly the entire field of a canvas. The rectangles have only slightly different hues, while the background color differs only a little more from that of the rectangles. Each area has...