Man Smoking
1933
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 81.2 x 60.6 cm (31 15/16 x 23 7/8 in.) framed: 89.9 x 69.9 x 6.7 cm (35 3/8 x 27 1/2 x 2 5/8 in.)
Classification
Painting
Department
CMC
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc.
Accession Number
1986.43.39
Art Historical Context
Mark Rothko's *Man Smoking* (1933) is an early oil on canvas painting that captures the artist at the dawn of his career, long before his iconic abstract color fields of the 1940s and 1950s. Measuring 81.2 x 60.6 cm, this intimate work depicts a solitary male figure engaged in the simple act of smoking, rendered with a directness reflective of Rothko's figurative phase. Created during the Great Depression, it echoes the social realism of the era, influenced by urban life and the struggles of everyday people in New York City, where Rothko had settled after immigrating from Russia as a child. O...
About the Artist
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko (born Marcus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz, September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970) stands as one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century American art and a central pioneer of Abstract Expressionism. Born into a Jewish family in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia), then part of the Russian Empire, Rothko's early life was marked by the fear and persecution faced by Jews in Tsarist Rus...