Mark Rothko wasn’t chasing beauty; he was chasing feeling. Born in Latvia in 1903 and raised in America, he turned away from figurative art to build vast fields of colour that could speak directly to emotion. His paintings weren’t about form or design; they were meditations; slow, quiet, and overwhelming in their simplicity. Yet that same simplicity has made him one of the most expensive artists in history. In 2012, one of his colour fields sold for nearly $87 million, a price that might have ho

“I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.” — Mark Rothko Artist Mark Rothko sought to make paintings that would bring people to tears. He painted to explore the depths of himself and the human condition. For him, art was a profound form of communication, and art making was a moral act. Born in Latvia in 190