Rothko Mark (born Markus Rothkowitz) (1903, Dvinsk, Vitebsk Governorate — 1970, New York) — painter.

From 1913 Mark Rothko lived in the United States. In 1921–1923 he studied at Yale University. In 1924 he entered the Art Students League in New York.

From 1929 to 1952 he taught painting. Together with fellow artists he founded the expressionist group “The Ten” in 1935. In 1933 Rothko’s first solo exhibition took place in Portland (USA).

His early paintings were executed in a realist manner (Woman Sewing, c. 1935; Subway, 1938). In the early 1940s Rothko moved away from realism and created his first mythological compositions (Antigone, 1941, Washington, National Gallery; Hierarchical Birds, 1945, ibid.). He defended the timeless and irrational meaning of art and stylistically turned toward Surrealism.

Rothko’s work is characterised by a striving toward abstraction and by his refusal to give descriptive titles to his paintings, which he usually identified only by the year of creation or by numbers. He became the creator of a new direction in painting.

Personal exhibitions of his work were held at the Venice Biennale (1958) and in many other galleries and museums.