Barnett Newman

1905-1970 · American · Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting

Auction record: $84.17M

Black Fire I, 1961 · Christie's, New York · May 13, 2014

Biography

Barnett Newman, born in New York to Polish-Jewish immigrants, was a writer and organiser before his breakthrough painting Onement I in 1948, where a single vertical band, which he called a zip, divides a field of colour. From then on he built large, flat, intensely coloured canvases such as Vir Heroicus Sublimis and the fourteen Stations of the Cross, aiming at the sublime rather than at gesture. Ignored for much of the 1950s, he became a key reference for Minimalism and Colour Field painting. His output was small, perhaps around 120 paintings, and most are in museums. Major canvases therefore reach auction only once in many years, while the market in between consists mainly of prints, etchings and works on paper.

Market

Liquidity: Low

Museums

Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Tate Modern, Londra
The Menil Collection, Houston

Sources

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