Barnett Newman ─ A Catalogue Raisonne

Barnett Newman (1905-1970), one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, has captivated critics, scholars, and the general public for decades. This volume presents Newman's entire oeuvre - paintings, drawings, graphics, sculptures, an architectural model, unidentified and unfinished works, and ephemera - in a definitive and magisterial review of the artist's career.
Drawing upon extensive documentation at the Barnett Newman Foundation, New York, Richard Shiff explains how Newman attempts to create an abstract art as a moral reaction to the horrors of World War II. Rejecting figuration and decoration alike, the artist became convinced in the mid-1940s that content emerges through the act of painting. As a result, the content of his works of the 1940s and 1950s is conveyed in what was at that time an entirely new way.
The majority of the illustrations in Shiff's essay are of works by European and American artists that Newman may personally have been familiar with. Also included is a selection of installation views and studio shots that cast interesting light on the artist and his practice.
The catalogue raisonne, compiled by independent scholar Heidi Colsman-Freyberger, includes a color reproduction of each of Newman's works, along with its provenance, its exhibition history, and its publication history. This information was gathered from a multitude of sources, including the documentation assembled by the artist's wife over a period of more than fifty years and now archived at The Barnett Newman Foundation, New York.