Untitled (man with racket and ball)

1939 · Painting

Angaben

1929–1952
Teaching children at the Brooklyn Jewish Center
From 1929 Rothko taught drawing, painting and clay sculpture part-time to schoolchildren at the Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, where he remained until 1952.
mid-1937
A rift with Edith
In mid-1937 Rothko separated temporarily from his wife Edith; they reconciled several months later, but the relationship stayed tense and they would divorce in 1944.
1938
The Mercury Gallery show: a protest against the Whitney
In 1938 the group held a show at the Mercury Gallery in New York as a protest against the Whitney Museum, which it regarded as having a provincial, regionalist agenda. In these years Rothko, like Avery, Gorky, Pollock and de Kooning, found work with the Works Progress Administration.
21 February 1938
Becomes a US citizen
On 21 February 1938 Rothko received American citizenship, relieved: he had feared that the growing influence of the Nazis in Europe might lead to the sudden deportation of Jews without citizenship.
1940
Shortens his name to Mark Rothko
Concerned about rising antisemitism in Europe and America, Rothko shortened “Markus Rothkowitz” to “Mark Rothko” in 1940; “Roth” still sounded identifiably Jewish, so he settled on “Rothko”. All his works have been signed with that name since.