Mark Rothko, one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century, was born in Daugavpils, Latvia in 1903. His family immigrated to the United States in 1913, after a 12-day voyage. Mark moved to New York in the autumn of 1923 and found employment in the garment trade and settled down on the Upper West Side. It was while he was visiting someone at the Art Students League that he saw students painting a model. According to him, this was the start of his life as an artist. He was twenty years old and had taken some art lessons at school, so his initial experience was far from an immediate calling. In 1936, Mark Rothko began writing a book, which he never completed, about the similarities in the children's art and the work of modern painters. The work of modernists, which was influenced by primitive art, could, according to him, be compared to that of children in that "Child art transforms itself into primitivism, which is only the child producing a copy of himself." In this same work, he said that "The fact that one usually begins with drawing is already academic. We start with colour." It was not long before his multiform developed into the style he is remembered for. In 1949 Rothko exhibited these new works at the Betty Parsons Gallery. For reviewer Harold Rosenberg, the paintings were unique and primitive. Rothko had, after painting his first multiform, separated himself from the world in East Hampton on Long Island, only inviting a very few people, including Rosenberg, to view the new paintings. The discovery of his works' specialty came at a period of great sorrow: his mother Kate died in October 1948. As part of this new uniformity of artistic vision, his paintings no longer had individual titles. From this point on they were simply untitled, numbered or dated. However, to assist in distinguishing one work from another, traders would sometimes add the primary colours to the name. Additionally, for the next few years, Rothko painted in oil only on large vertical tents. This was done to surround the viewer, or, in his words, to make the viewer feel enveloped within the picture. How long did Rothko stay in the United States before he moved to New York?
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