Mark Rothko

Born in Dvinsk, Russia (now Daugavpils, Latvia), Mark Rothko emigrated at the age of ten to the United States, where he became a leading member of the Abstract Expressionist circle of painters that emerged in New York during the 1940s. In the early years of his career, Rothko painted Surrealist-inflected works in which he used forms derived from primitive totems and mythologies to commune with the epic and tragic events of ancient epochs—which corresponded, he believed, to the horrors and devastation wrought by World War II.

By the late 1940s, Rothko shifted to pure abstraction, filling his canvases with stacked horizontal bands of luminous color in order to express what he described as “basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom.” He would continue to explore this format in various iterations for the duration of his career. These works came to epitomize the branch of Abstract Expressionist painting known as Color Field—defined by subtly modulated chromatic compositions that were distinct from the agitated gesturalism of painters such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Four Darks in Red belongs to a group of dark, somber-toned works from the late 1950s. For these works Rothko painted on an increasingly large scale, a format he also employed in a contemporaneous mural commission (ultimately abandoned) for the Seagram Building in New York. The painting’s black and maroon hues, layered in thin, atmospheric veils over a vivid red background, impart a sense of depth and muted radiance that envelops the viewer and commands total emotional and visual engagement.