Currently Hanging: Rothko

The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is currently displaying Composition (pictured), a work by American artist Mark Rothko, in the Schnitzer Gallery for American Art. Here are some interesting facts about this work and the artist (some of which is directly copy-pasted from a press release):

• Painted in 1958, the vivid palette of Composition radiates with visceral heat and intensity. In other words, the artist used the color red a lot.

• Rothko rejected that he was an Abstract Expressionist, insisting he was not an abstract painter and was not interested in the relationship between form and color. Later art historians called "bullshit" on this claim.

• Mark Rothko was born in Latvia and immigrated to Portland, Ore. in 1913. He attended Lincoln High School in Portland before he studied liberal arts at Yale University from 1921 to 1923, but left without getting a degree. In 1925 Rothko moved to New York, where he started studying at the Art Students League under Max Weber. His first solo exhibition took place at the Portland Art Museum in 1933. No artists in Portland know of this fact and, therefore, continue to copy Rothko day-in and day-out.

• In 1970, Rothko committed suicide in his studio. On a related note, Composition sold for $1,106,000 in the '90s.