Mark Rothko was one of the most famous of the American abstract expressionist painters, renowned for his color-field paintings.
Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Russia on 25 September 1903; his family emigrated to the USA in 1913, to Portland, Oregon. Rothko was largely a self-taught painter, studying liberal arts at Yale University (1921-3, leaving in his third year), then moving to New York in 1925 and attending a few painting classes at the Art Students League in New York (under Max Weber), frequenting exhibitions, and visiting artists in their studios. Rothko committed suicide in 1970.
