and one of the foremost of the color field
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
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
.
Barnett Newman wrote catalogue forewords and reviews before having his first solo show at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1948.
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.