Example Video

Rothko: Daugavpils, Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire). His father Jacob was a pharmacist and an intellectual, who provided his children with a secular and political, rather than religious upbringing. However, following the Russian pogrom against Jews, incited by the 1905 revolution, Jacob repented and became a Baal teshuva. Unlike Jews in most cities of Czarist Russia, those in Daugavpils were spared a violent outbreak of reprisal. In an environment where Jews were often blamed for many of the evils that befell Russia, Rothko’s early childhood was plagued with fear, as he witnessed the occasional violence brought down upon Jews by Cossacks attempting to stifle revolutionary uprisings.



An image that remained with him throughout his adult life was that of open pits, where Cossacks buried Jews they kidnapped and murdered. Some critics interpret Rothko’s later use of rectangular forms as a formal representation of these graves. However, Rothko’s memory may be disputed, as no mass executions were said to have been committed in or near Daugavpils during this period.

Despite Jacob’s modest income, the Rothkowitzes were highly educated, and able to speak Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew. Following Jacob’s return to Orthodox Judaism, he sent Marcus, his youngest son, to the cheder at age five, where Rothko studied the Talmud. This had the adverse effect of stigmatizing him as an outsider within his own family, as his elders were educated in the public school system. As a Jew, the young Marcus was therefore an outsider among outsiders.