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Definition: Rothko, Mark from Philip's Encyclopedia

US painter, b. Russia. A leader of the New York school, he developed a highly individual style featuring large, rectangular areas of thinly layered, pale colours arranged parallel to each other. Towards the end of his life, Rothko introduced darker colours, notably maroon and black. Examples of this phase can be seen in his nine paintings from the late 1950s, entitled Black on Maroon and Red on Maroon.


Rothko, Mark

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
originally Marcus Rothkovitch 1903-70 US painter Born in Dvinsk, Latvia, he emigrated with his family to the USA in 1913 and later studied at Yale (1921-23). Largely self-taught as an artist, he had his first one-man show in New York in 1933. During the 1940s he was influenced by Surrealism but by the early 1950s had evolved his own peaceful and meditative form of Abstract Expressionism, staining huge canvases with rectangular blocks of pure colour and later with sombre reds and blacks. Among his works in this style, which was dubbed "colour field painting", are Light, Earth, and Blue (1954) and The Black and the Red (1956). In 1958-59 he was commissioned to paint a series of murals for the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building, New York, but he withheld them and in 1969 donated a selection of them to the Tate Gallery, London, eg Black on Maroon . On the day of their arrival in 1970 a cable from New York announced that he had been found dead in his studio. He had recently…
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Full text Article Rothko

From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary Full text Article Biographical Names
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Full text Article Rothko, Mark

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
(born Sept. 25, 1903, Dvinsk, Russia—died Feb. 25, 1970, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Russian-born U.S. painter. His family settled in Portland, Ore., in 1913, and he took up painting (largely self-taught) after moving to New York City in 1925. His early realistic style culminated in the Subway series…
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Full text Article Rothko, Mark

From A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes
(25 September 1903–25 February 1970; b. Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz) Born in Russia, raised in Portland, Oregon, Rothko passed through Yale University before coming to New York in 1925 and became for his next three decades one among many serious painters struggling there. Finally, in the 1950s, he…
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Full text Article Rothko, Mark

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
originally Marcus Rothkovitch 1903-70 US painter Born in Dvinsk, Latvia, he emigrated with his family to the USA in 1913 and later studied at Yale (1921-23). Largely self-taught as an artist, he had his first one-man show in New York in 1933. During the 1940s he was influenced by Surrealism but by…
| 189 words
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Full text Article Quotations by Author

From Chambers Dictionary of Great Quotations
Abbott, Diane Julie 1953- Abelard, Peter 1079-1142 Abercrombie, Lascelles 1881-1938 Abrams, M(eyer) H(oward) 1912- Abse, Dannie 1923-2014 Abu’l-’Alá, Al-Ma’arri 973-1058 Abzug, Bella originally Bella Savitzky 1920-98…
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Full text Article PAINTING AND SCULPTURE

From The Reader's Companion to American History
During much of the two and a half centuries in which the visual arts in America developed from a primitive to a sophisticated state, there hung over artists a sense of debilitating provincialism. The arts, they believed, were European, and it was European mannerisms that set the standards of…
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Full text Article HOW TO READ THE NOVEL

From The Handy Literature Answer Book
Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, comtesse de...
What makes a novel different from a short story? Both the short story and the novel are narrative forms in which the same elements already discussed—plot, characterization, point of view, imagery, setting, and symbolism—apply. However, the novel's expansive form brings additional challenges and…
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Full text Article FURTHER READING

From The Value of a Dollar: 1860-2019
Ahlstrom, Sydney E. ; David D. Hall . A Religious History of the American People . 2nd ed., Yale UP , 2004. Alter, Adam . Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked . Reprint ed., Penguin Books , 2018. …
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Full text Article Mitchell, Joan

From A to Z of Women: American Women in the Visual Arts
(b. 1926–d. 1992) painter One of the few female abstract expressionists, Joan Mitchell was born into a wealthy family in Chicago on February 21, 1926. Her father, a physician and amateur painter, introduced her to fine art through visits to the Art Institute of Chicago. She began painting as a child…
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Full text Article Miró, Joan

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Spanish painter and sculptor, a major figure in surrealism . In the mid-1920s he developed an abstract style, lyrical and often witty, with amoeba shapes, some linear, some highly coloured, generally floating on a plain background. Birth of the World (1925; Museum of Modern Art, New York) is typical…
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