Newman, Barnett (1905–1970). American painter, one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism and one of the the initiators of Colour Field Painting. He was born in New York, the son of Polish immigrant parents and studied at the Art Students League, 1922, and the City College of New York, 1923–7, before working for his father's clothing company, 1927–37 (he again attended the Art Students League in 1929–30). During the 1930s he had a hard time financially; the Depression almost ruined his father's business, and unlike most American painters of the time Newman did not work for the Federal Art Project, being unwilling to accept State handouts. Part of his living came from teaching art in high schools. He destroyed most of his early work and stopped painting in the early 1940s, but he began again in 1944, and in the second half of the 1940s evolved a distinctive style of mystical abstraction—he considered ‘the sublime’ to be his ultimate subject-matter (see ABSTRACT SUBLIME). The work with which he announced this style was Onement I (MOMA, New York, 1948), a monochromatic canvas of dark red with a single stripe of lighter red running down the middle. Such stripes (or ‘zips’ as Newman preferred to call them) became a characteristic feature of his work. By the time he painted Onement I Newman already had a reputation as a controversialist and a spokesman for avant-garde art (in catalogue essays and in articles in journals such as Tiger's Eye, of which he was associate editor), and in 1948 he collaborated with Baziotes, Hare, Motherwell, and Rothko in founding the Subjects of the Artist School.

In 1949 Newman painted his first wall-size pictures (he was one of the pioneers of the very large format) and in 1950 he had his first one-man exhibition, at the Betty Parsons gallery. This was coolly received by critics and fellow artists, and by the mid-1950s his very spare style had separated him from the predominantly ‘gestural’ idiom of his colleagues. For a time he became a somewhat marginalized figure and he stopped painting in 1956. He had a heart attack in 1957, but the following year a resurgence began with a series of paintings in black-and-white, and in the last decade of his life his reputation soared and his output was prolific. In the 1960s he began producing large steel sculptures featuring slender shafts recalling the vertical strips of his paintings (Broken Obelisk, MOMA, New York, 1963–9) and in his late years he also experimented with shaped canvases, painting several triangular pictures. His work had great influence on the development of Colour Field Painting. His reputation stands high, but he is not without his detractors. John Canaday, for example wrote that: ‘there is nothing inherently mystical or even expressive about a Newman painting … the response is entirely in the mind of the observer … and is stimulated not by what the painting is, but by what Newman said it was. Newman's fans among critics are either people who knew him well, worked with him and discussed theories with him, or other people who have had the experience at second hand through what these critics have written. In either case, the experience is simply not there in the paintings … if ever there was literary painting, it is Barnett Newman's, an extreme case of dependence on verbal exercises.’

Barnett Newman

The American painter Barnett Newman (1905-1970) was a central figure among color-field abstractionists between 1950 and 1970.

Barnett Newman was born in New York City on Jan. 29, 1905. Between 1922 and 1926 he studied with Duncan Smith, John Sloan, and William von Schlegell at the Art Students League and at the same time attended the City College of New York, where he received a bachelor of arts degree in 1927. He did graduate work at Cornell University. In 1936 he married Annalee Greenhouse, and in 1948 he and William Baziotes, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko founded a school of art in New York called "Subjects of the Artist." Throughout his life Newman traveled extensively in the United States, Canada, and Europe. He also taught occasionally: at the University of Saskatchewan in 1959 and at the University of Pennsylvania in 1962-1964. He died in New York City on July 3, 1970.

During most of his career Newman shunned one-man exhibitions, preferring to have his work seen by a small group of friends, patrons, and fellow artists. His list of oneman shows is therefore limited to five. By the 1960s Newman's stature in the field of contemporary painting became increasingly apparent to a wider audience. His work was included in a number of national and international group shows, including the Seattle World's Fair (1962), the São Paulo Bienal (1965), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "New York Painting and Sculpture, 1940 to 1970" (1969-1970).

Criticism of Newman's work has shifted recently. During the 1950s he was generally regarded as an abstract expressionist and was linked with artists as diverse as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and Robert Motherwell. This link was in part justifiable: in addition to being a member of the abstract expressionist generation, Newman was that group's spiritual ally in its struggle to gain recognition for its new and often radical work.

More recently, Newman's art has been associated with a younger generation of painters, including Jules Olitski and Kenneth Noland. In this case the association is based on the fact that Newman's work consistently eschewed the painterly expressiveness of artists such as De Kooning or Kline. Like his younger counterparts, Newman seems to have been most concerned with generating pictorial space through color alone rather than through violent or explosive brushwork.

In Newman's best paintings, such as Cathedra (1950-1951) and Vir heroicus sublimis (1950-1951), the imagery consists of a single field of color that is inflected by one or two thin vertical bands. But the paint is applied with light, feathery brushstrokes that blend softly into one another and nowhere permit the barest sensation of tactile pigmentation. His rich pictorial space is created through varying densities of a particular color rather than through lines or discrete shapes. In this sense, his paintings are purely optical and eschew the perceptual values of objects or spaces in the world outside of painting.

Further Reading

For Newman's position within contemporary art see Michael Fried, Three American Painters (1965), and Thomas B. Hess, Barnett Newman (1969). An essay by one of Newman's early champions is "Barnett Newman: The Living Rectangle" in Harold Rosenberg, The Anxious Object: Art Today and Its Audience (1964).

Additional Sources

Newman, Barnett, Barnett Newman, New York: Abrams, 1978. □

Newman, Barnett (b New York, 29 Jan. 1905; d New York, 4 July 1970). American painter, one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism and one of the initiators of Colour Field Painting. During the 1930s he had a hard time financially; the Depression almost ruined his father's clothing business, and unlike most American painters of the time Newman did not work for the Federal Art Project, being unwilling to accept state handouts. Part of his living came from teaching art in high schools. He destroyed most of his early work and stopped painting in the early 1940s, but he began again in 1944, and in the second half of the 1940s evolved a distinctive style of mystical abstraction—he considered ‘the sublime’ to be his ultimate subject matter. The work with which he announced this style was Onement I (1948, MoMA, New York), a monochromatic canvas of dark red with a single stripe of lighter red running down the middle. Such stripes (or ‘zips’ as Newman preferred to call them) became a characteristic feature of his work. By the time he painted Onement I Newman already had a reputation as a controversialist and a spokesman for avant-garde art (in catalogue essays and in articles in journals). In 1949 he painted his first wall-size pictures (he was one of the pioneers of the very large format) and in 1950 he had his first one-man exhibition, at the Betty Parsons Gallery. This was coolly received by critics and fellow artists, and by the mid-1950s his very spare style had separated him from the predominantly gestural idiom of his colleagues. For a time he became a somewhat marginalized figure and he stopped painting in 1956. He had a heart attack in 1957, but in the following year a resurgence began with a series of paintings in black and white, and in the last decade of his life his output and his reputation soared. From 1965 he made steel sculptures (vertical strips recalling his paintings) and in his late years he also experimented with shaped canvases, painting several triangular pictures.

Newman, Barnett (1905–70). American painter, one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism and one of the initiators of Colour Field Painting. During the 1930s he had a hard time financially; the Depression almost ruined his father's clothing business, and unlike most American painters of the time Newman did not work for the Federal Art Project, being unwilling to accept State handouts. Part of his living came from teaching art in high schools. He destroyed most of his early work and stopped painting in the early 1940s, but he began again in 1944, and in the second half of the 1940s evolved a distinctive style of mystical abstraction—he considered ‘the sublime’ to be his ultimate subject matter. The work with which he announced this style was Onement I (1948, MoMA, New York), a monochromatic canvas of dark red with a single stripe of lighter red running down the middle. Such stripes (or ‘zips’ as Newman preferred to call them) became a characteristic feature of his work. By the time he painted Onement I Newman already had a reputation as a controversialist and a spokesman for avant-garde art (in catalogue essays and in articles in journals). In 1949 he painted his first wall-size pictures (he was one of the pioneers of the very large format) and in 1950 he had his first one-man exhibition, at the Betty Parsons gallery. This was coolly received by critics and fellow artists, and by the mid-1950s his very spare style had separated him from the predominantly gestural idiom of his colleagues. For a time he became a somewhat marginalized figure and he stopped painting in 1956. He had a heart attack in 1957, but in the following year a resurgence began with a series of paintings in black and white, and in the last decade of his life his reputation soared and his output was prolific. From 1965 he made steel sculptures (vertical strips recalling his paintings) and in his late years he also experimented with shaped canvases, painting several triangular pictures.

Barnett Newman 1905–70, American artist, b. New York City. A member of the New York school, Newman was one of the first to reject conventional notions of spatial composition in art. Often using monumental scale, he took abstraction to its farther reaches. In his severe Stations of the Cross series (1958–66), he divided raw canvas vertically at intervals by black or white bands of various widths. In other paintings (e.g., Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue IV?, 1969–70) Newman used large areas of saturated, sometimes primary color punctuated by narrow vertical bands of other colors that he called "zips" as the source of visual and emotional impact. Newman became known as a major painter in the last decade of his life, and his work was an important influence on the practitioners of color-field painting . He also created a number of monumental abstract sculptures.

Bibliography: See study by T. B. Hess (1971).

Newman, Barnett (1905–70) US painter, associated with abstract expressionism. He developed a distinctive kind of mystical abstraction, expressed in its earliest form in Onement (1948). This painting consists of a single tone of dark red with a narrow stripe of lighter red running vertically across the middle. With Mark Rothko, Newman pioneered monochromatic colour field painting and the use of huge canvases.