Barnett Newman (Born to Abraham Newman and Anna Zalovska; Siblings: George, Gertrude, and Sarah; Spouse: Annalee Greenhouse)
Barnett Newman (1905–1970) was a monumental figure in 20th-century American art, celebrated for his intellectual approach to abstraction and his role in pioneering Color Field painting. Alongside Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, he helped shift the center of the art world from Paris to New York after World War II.
Born in New York to Polish-Jewish immigrants, Newman initially studied philosophy at the City College of New York before pursuing art at the Art Students League. For much of his early life, he worked in his father’s clothing business and served as a substitute art teacher. Interestingly, Newman destroyed almost all of his early work from the 1930s and early 40s, considering it unworthy of his later philosophical standards.
His major breakthrough occurred on his 43rd birthday in 1948 with the painting Onement I. In this work, he established his signature motif: a vertical band of color—which he called a “zip”—that stretched from the top to the bottom of the canvas. Unlike the “drip” of Pollock or the “gestural brushwork” of de Kooning, Newman’s “zip” was a tool used to define the spatial structure of the painting and create a sense of metaphysical presence for the viewer.
Newman’s work often dealt with deep spiritual and existential themes, exemplified by his massive 14-painting series, The Stations of the Cross (1958–1966), which used a stark palette of black, white, and raw canvas to evoke the suffering of humanity. Although his work was initially met with confusion or even hostility by critics, by the 1960s he was embraced as a forefather by the younger generation of Minimalist artists who admired his use of scale and reductionist forms.
Active in others filds : Art Theory & Criticism, Sculpture (notably Broken Obelisk), Writing, Education, and even a brief run for Mayor of New York City in 1933.
