Using walls, doors and other architectural elements as color fields, space is created through a simplified style compressed to an almost planar picture surface that only occasionally opens on a deeper perspective. Usually isolated or in couples, his figures occupy cleanly delimited spaces, so that they seem to be locked up, imprisoned. If Rothko's urban settings are usually vague, the subway clearly interests him for its unmistakable experience. The Subway paintings aim to encompass the whole loneliness and isolation of modern urban life.