Mark Rothko

Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit,

— Mark Rothko

Without monsters and gods, art cannot enact a drama.

— Mark Rothko

Many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and…

— Mark Rothko

It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one's arms again.

— Mark Rothko

This would be a distortion of their meaning, since the pictures are intimate and intense, and are the opposite of what is…

— Mark Rothko

The picture must be... a revelation, an unexpected and unprecedented resolution of an eternally familiar need.

— Mark Rothko

To me art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risk.

— Mark Rothko

It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well…

— Mark Rothko

There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend: One day, the black will swallow the red.

— Mark Rothko

I do not believe that there was ever a question of being abstract or representational. It is really a matter of ending…

— Mark Rothko

Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can only be explored by those willing to take the risks.

— Mark Rothko

If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which…

— Mark Rothko

It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the…

— Mark Rothko

The myth holds us, therefore, not through its romantic flavor, not the remembrance of beauty of some bygone age, not through the…

— Mark Rothko

If you are moved only by the color relationships, then you miss the point.

— Mark Rothko

I don't express myself in my paintings. I express my not-self.

— Mark Rothko

The progression of a painter’s work…will be toward clarity; toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and…

— Mark Rothko

The romantics were prompted to seek exotic subjects and to travel to far off places. They failed to realize that, though the…

— Mark Rothko

I am here to make you think. . . . I am not here to make pretty pictures!

— Mark Rothko

I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted…

— Mark Rothko

We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the…

— Mark Rothko

There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.

— Mark Rothko

Silence is so accurate.

— Mark Rothko

A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It…

— Mark Rothko

The people that weep before my paintings are having the same religious experience that I had when I painted it.

— Mark Rothko