Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko was an American painter, born in what is now Latvia, who came to the United States as a child and became a leading figure of Abstract Expressionism. From about 1950 he painted large canvases of soft-edged rectangles of colour floating on a coloured ground, meant to move viewers to deep feeling. He painted dark murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building, then withdrew from the commission and gave nine of them to Tate, where they hang in their own room. His last major work is the Rothko Chapel in Houston.