Mark Rothko, a titan among modern painters, said that the subject matter of his paintings was the extremes of human emotion. His extraordinary achievement was the communication of tragedy and elation through forms reduced to starkest simplicity-oftentimes a pair of rectangles. The National Gallery of Art is the largest public repository of Rothko's works, with a collection that includes nearly 300 paintings on canvas and paper and a study collection of more than 600 works on paper, 12 of which are featured in this calendar.