Maker/Artist
Newman, Barnett
American painter, 1905-1970
Newman was born in New York to the parents of Polish immigrants. He studied painting in the 1920s but gave it up from 1940-1944, during which time he destroyed most of his early work. In 1948, he helped found 'Subject of the Artist' an art school in New York, along with Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell. His work was usually characterized by vertical stripes on large canvases, using a wide range of colors. His painting style, along with his tendency toward the spritual and transcendental, associated him with the Abstract Expressionists. However, the simple form of his paintings would be a major influence on the next generation of Minimalists.
