Barnett Newman was born on January 29, 1905 in New York. From 1919 to 1923 Newman attended De Witt Clinton High School in Manhattan. During his senior year, Newman attended drawing classes six days a week with Duncan Smith at the Art Students League. While at the Art Students League, Newman met fellow artist Adolph Gottlieb. Gottlieb would later introduce Newman to artists Milton Avery and Marcus Rothkowitz (later Mark Rothko).
In 1943, Newman met Betty Parson, who ran a small gallery and gave him his first solo show on January 23, 1950. The show received primarily negative response. In 1951 with the help of friends Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, and Tony Smith, Newman installs his second exhibit at the Betty Parsons Gallery. Again, critics condemned the exhibition. In the months to follow, Newman removed his work from the Betty Parsons Gallery and withdrew from all gallery activities.
Working on and off throughout the years, Newman developed a mature style characterized by areas of color separated by thin vertical lines, "zips" as Newman called them. While his color palettes changed and evolved, zips were a constant element within Newman's work; creating a spatial divide while simultaneously uniting the canvas. Although an Abstract Expressionist, Newman often gave names to many of his works, hinting at specific subjects, such as Abraham, 1949, the name of his father who had passed away in 1947.
Throughout the late 1950's and 1960's, Newman gained recognition as an artist; and has since been included in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions, including; The New American Painting, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Barnett Newman and Willem de Kooning, Allan Stone Gallery, New York; Barnett Newman, The Stations of the Cross: Lema Sabachtani, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; New York; Barnett Newman: January 29, 1905 – July 4, 1970, Pasadena Art Museum, California, and Barnett Newman, Tate Modern, London. In 1970, Newman received the Brandeis University Creative Arts Medal.
Barnett Newman died July 4, 1970 of a heart attack at the age of sixty-five.
