Mark Rothko

📍South Portland, Portland, OR 97201, USA

“I was born Marcus Rothkowitz in 1903 in Dvinsk, in the Russian Empire, the youngest of four children of a pharmacist; as Jews we lived in fear of pogroms, and my father sent my older brothers ahead to America. In late 1913, when I was ten, my mother, sister and I followed through Ellis Island and across the country to join them in Portland, Oregon. Within months my father died, and we had to make our way in a new country where we spoke only Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew. We lived in South Portland, among other Jewish immigrants, and I sold newspapers to help out. I learned English quickly, read voraciously, argued about politics and justice at the Jewish community centre, and graduated with honours from Lincoln High School at seventeen. I won a full scholarship to Yale but left without a degree and drifted to New York, where, slowly, I became a painter. My great fields of colour were my way of speaking about grief, awe and the human condition. But I never forgot being the immigrant boy in South Portland.”

Sources: Wikipedia: Mark Rothko nga.gov theartstory.org