"Four Darks in Red" is a 1958 painting by whom?

Mark Rothko (September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was an American painter of Russian Jewish descent. Although Rothko himself refused to adhere to any art movement, he is generally identified as an abstract expressionist.

Four Darks in Red shows Mark Rothko's often used axis of black, brown and red, which is in a number of his easel paintings and in the mural projects for the Seagram Building.

Rothko's work brought movement to the flat two-dimensional canvas. The canvas remains stationary but as the observer stares at the areas of color, they seem to move and vibrate. The perception of motion is an optical illusion because it is happening in the eyes and mind of the observer, not on the canvas itself.

This is characteristic of Rothko's signature "multiform" style of blurred, lozenge shapes, moving horizontally across the surface of the canvas. Its meaning is difficult to comprehend, however it could be that, like Jackson Pollock, another Abstract Expressionist and contemporary of Rothko, the piece has no "meaning" in the normal sense of the word, but rather the painting is itself its own meaning.