Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko is a minimalist painter, whose work mostly consists of colored background with soft rectangles in other colors on top. "White Center," 1950, is posted below.

I am not generally a huge fan of minimalist or abstract paintings, but I have realized that I do not mind color blocked paintings like the one posted above. In "White Center," Rothko utilizes an orange background, with purple, yellow, red, black, and white. Rothko has a good color sense, not using dissonant shades of these colors. If the purple was more blue than it is red, it would not mesh as well into the painting. Instead, the red tones in the purple and the red tones in the orange compliment each other. The red underneath the yellow serves to create an obvious definition between the yellow and the orange. Rothko serves as a good example of why mixing our own colors creates better results.