Canto XV
1964
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
lithograph in red on wove Shogun paper
Dimensions
overall: 39.4 x 34.9 cm (15 1/2 x 13 3/4 in.)
Classification
Portfolio
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection
Accession Number
1997.129.16
Art Historical Context
Barnett Newman's *Canto XV* (1964) is a striking lithograph that exemplifies the artist's profound engagement with abstraction during the height of the Abstract Expressionist. Newman, a pivotal figure in color field painting, was renowned for his monumental canvases featuring vast fields of color interrupted by thin "zips"—vertical lines that evoke a sense of cosmic scale and spiritual tension. Created in the mid-1960s, amid Newman's exploration of printmaking later in his career, this draws its evocative title from Dante's *Inferno*, suggesting layers of literary and existential depth within ...
About the Artist
Barnett Newman
Barnett Newman (1905–1970) was an American artist and a leading figure of Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting whose radical reductions of pictorial elements to pure color and vertical line — which he called "zips" — fundamentally altered the course of postwar American art. Born in New York City to Jewish immigrants from Poland, he studied at the Art Students League and the City College...