Barnett Newman
Overview
 
Barnett Newman was an American artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

 and one of the foremost of the color field
Color Field
Color Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering Abstract Expressionists...

 painters.
Newman was born in New York City, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland. He studied philosophy at the City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

 and worked in his father's business manufacturing clothing. From the 1930s he made paintings, said to be in an expressionist style, but eventually destroyed all these works.

A well-respected writer and critic who also organized exhibitions and wrote catalogs, Newman later became a member of the Uptown Group
The Art of This Century Gallery
The Art of This Century gallery was opened by Peggy Guggenheim at 30 W. 57th Street in New York City on October 20, 1942. The gallery occupied two commercial spaces on the seventh floor of a building that was part of the midtown arts district including the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of...

.
Barnett Newman wrote catalogue forewords and reviews before having his first solo show at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1948.
Quotations

Painting, like passion, is a living voice, which, when I hear it, I must let it speak, unfettered. :American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, p.250, Herskovic, Marika; nyschoolpress, 2003, ISBN 0-9677994-1-4

1. To us art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks.

2. This world of imagination is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense.

3. It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way not his way.

4. We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.

5. It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. (Rothko said this is the essence of academicism.)

6. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing.

7. We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art. : June 13, 1943 edition of the New York Times|New York Times, brief manifesto: Barnett Newman with Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb.

 
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