A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent.

Rothko’s one-man show at Guggenheim's gallery in late 1945 resulted in few sales (prices ranging from $150 to $750) and in less-than-favorable reviews. His paintings' "surfaces are expansive and push outward in all directions or their surfaces contract and rush inward in all directions. Like his father Rothko was passionate about such issues as workers’ rights and women's right to contraception.

Mark Rothko (Russian: Марк Ро́тко; born Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич; Marcus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz; September 25 1903 – February 25 1970) was an American painter of Latvian Jewish descent. He immigrated with his family from Dvinsk (now part of Latvia then part of the Russian Empire) to the United States in 1913 when he was 10 years old.