Untitled (musicians)

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.

early 1930s

Milton Avery and Adolph Gottlieb

In the early 1930s Rothko met Adolph Gottlieb and the circle around Milton Avery, including Barnett Newman, Joseph Solman, Louis Schanker and John Graham. According to Elaine de Kooning it was Avery who convinced Rothko that a professional artist’s life was possible; the friends vacationed together at Lake George and Gloucester, painting by day and talking about art in the evenings.

summer 1933

First solo show at the Portland Art Museum

In the summer of 1933 the Portland Art Museum held Rothko’s first one-person show, mostly drawings and watercolours. In a very unusual step he hung works by his young pupils from the Center Academy alongside his own.

21 November – 9 December 1933

First solo show in New York

At the Contemporary Arts Gallery Rothko showed fifteen oil paintings, mostly portraits, along with watercolours and drawings. The oils especially caught the critics’ eye: his fields of colour had already moved beyond Avery’s influence.

late 1935

Joins “The Ten”

In late 1935 Rothko joined Ilya Bolotowsky, Ben-Zion, Adolph Gottlieb, Louis Harris, Ralph Rosenborg, Louis Schanker and Joseph Solman to form “The Ten”, whose stated aim was to protest against the supposed equivalence of American painting and literal painting.

1936

An unfinished book on children’s art

In 1936 Rothko began a book, never completed, on the similarities between children’s art and the work of modern painters; in the manuscript he noted that starting with drawing is an academic notion and that “we may start with color”.