Dark Star ; the Tortured Genius of Mark Rothko ++ 'The People Who Weep before My Pictures Are Having the Same Religious Experience I Had When I Painted Them,' Declared Mark Rothko. His Brooding, Melancholy Art Has Always Provoked Extreme Reactions - and Tonight It Will Spark a Bidding Frenzy among the World's Top Collectors. the Man Himself Would Have Been Both Horrified and Thrilled, Says David Usborne

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Professional critics and fans of the Latvian-born American abstract painter Mark Rothko have long struggled to fathom the turns in his life and the twists of his soul that inspired his massive canvases of lowering, merging blocks of colour, which are sometimes luminous, sometimes dark and oppressive.

Inescapable in this exploration of the artist, of course, is the shock of his death. Rothko, after years of increasing isolation and depleting artistic output, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment on the morning of 25 February 1970, from suicide. The pool of blood came from a wound he had cut into one arm, at the elbow.

Rothko was 66 years old when he robbed the …