A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience. — Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz in 1903 in Daugavpils, Latvia, formerly Dvinsk, Russia, and moved to the United States in 1913. During his early life in Latvia, he witnessed some of the worst mob violence against Jews in Russian history, and always held in his memory this violent and hostile setting. Later in life, he left for New York and eventually became an important figure in the post–World War II group of artists known as the Abstract Expressionists...