Basic human emotions

I’m not an abstract artist…I’m not interested in the relationship of colour or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate these basic human emotions…The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience as I had when I painted them.
Mark Rothko

Black on Maroon 1958
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Red on Maroon 1959
Tate

Untitled 1969
Tate