NEW YORK, NY.- Barnett Newman (1905–1970), a founding member of the abstract expressionist movement, was a contemporary of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still. He left behind only 118 finished paintings, six sculptures, and 83 acknowledged drawings, yet he is often regarded as the greatest painter to have emerged after the Second World War. Barnett Newman is the definitive biography of a charismatic New Yorker who, by defying the rules, created an art of the sublime.

This landmark book features original research conducted over decades, using scores of interviews, oral histories, and previously unseen correspondence to paint a richly textured portrait of a creative sage who became an exemplar of the artist-citizen. Born in New York to Polish Jewish immigrant parents, Newman grandly aspired to involve himself in every detail of the city’s life. He was a crusader for the civil service, ran against La Guardia for mayor, worked as a teacher, wrote poetry, criticism, and manifestos, produced political plays, and promoted other artists—all before painting a mature work of his own in his early forties.

Newman began with none of the qualities once considered indispensable for a master artist—such as formal training, apprenticeship, or natural facility—but he possessed a galvanizing intellect and a conviction that aesthetic expression is an ecstatic declaration of existence and an assertion of human dignity.

Drawing on previously unpublished sources gleaned from full access to Newman’s archives, Amy Newman’s account presents a portrait of a maverick who influenced a generation and is now considered one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century.

Amy Newman is an art historian and journalist. She is the author of Challenging Art: “Artforum” 1962–1974 and the editor (with Irving Sandler) of Defining Modern Art: Selected Writings of Alfred H. Barr, Jr. She is not related to Barnett Newman.