Abstract Expressionist
By
MUHAMMAD FAHEEM TUFAIL
Roll No 07
MA (Hons.) Visual Arts
NCA LAHORE
Barnett Newman
NAME: BARNETT NEWMAN
BIRTH DATE: HANUARY 19, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH: NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
DEATH: JULY 3, 1970
PLACE OF DEATH: NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
NATIONALTY: AMERICAN
GENDER: MALE
OCCUPATION: PAINTER
The American painter Barnett Newman was a central figure among color-field abstractionists between 1950 and 1970. He was born in New York City, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland. Barney (childhood nickname) enjoys an active childhood full of sports, piano lessons, and street wrangling.
Abraham (Newman’s Father) was a passionate Zionist and supporter of the National Hebrew School of the Bronx. He was in textile business. The children were attending Hebrew School, and also tutored at home by young Jewish scholars from Europe. Barnett studied philosophy at the City College of New York and worked in his father's business.
During his first year of high school, Newman adopts a middle name, Benedict, a Latinate equivalent of his Hebrew name, Baruch. For a time after this, Newman is addressed as both ‚ “Barney” and “B. B.” He will use the extra initial “B” in signing his artwork through the mid-1940s and on official documents until the end of his life.
Newman often skipped classes to visit the close by Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Newman attended drawing classes six days a week with Duncan Smith at the Art Students League.
About his work:
From the 1930s he started making paintings, in an expressionist style. Before developing his mature style In 1940s Newman worked in surrealist mode. This is characterized by areas of colors separated by thin vertical lines, and Newman named these lines “zips”. In the first works featuring zips, the color fields are diverse, but latter the colors are pure and flat. Newman himself thought that he reaches his fully mature style with the