Amazon.com description: Product Description: Mark Rothko (American, b. Russia, 1903 1970), a titan among modern painters, communicated tragedy and elation through forms reduced to starkest simplicity oftentimes a pair of rectangles. Born Marcus Rothkowitz in a Latvian Jewish community, the artist emigrated to the United States at the age of ten. He established himself as a leader among New York s artistic avant-garde in the late 1940s and was central to the development of postwar abstract painting in the United States.