Barnett Newman - Untitled 1946

Louisiana poster with the work Untitled. 1946 , in connection with the exhibition series Louisiana on Paper in 2017 with the American artist Barnett Newman (1905-1970). Barnett Newman was one of the prominent figures on the 1950s art scene in New York. Here he worked in a radical and revolutionary way with painting, together with artists such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

Together they broke with the dominant European tradition and pioneered the so-called abstract expressionism and Color Field painting for entirely new directions in art. Artists of a new era, Newman believed, had to free themselves from all bonds, dive into chaos and wrest truth from emptiness to reach a “sublime now”.

As a draftsman and graphic artist, Barnett Newman also pushed boundaries and sought new paths in his attempt to express basic mental and existential conditions. And it was precisely in this capacity that we were able to meet him in this Louisiana on Paper exhibition, which showed a selection of 12 drawings and 26 graphic works.

Louisiana on Paper is a series that the museum dedicates to artists' graphic works, drawings and other works on paper. These are often small, intense exhibitions that call for immersion because they get close to the artist's creative process or register of ideas.