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1900 | 1910 | 1920 | 1930 | 1940 | 1950 | 1960 | 1970

1905
Barnett Newman is born on 29th January on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the eldest of four children. His parents, Abraham and Anna, Jewish immigrants from Russian Poland, had arrived in New York in 1900.
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Barnett Newman c.1920 Barnett Newman Foundation, New York

1915
His father's clothing manufacturing company thrives, and the family move to a middle-class neighbourhood of the Bronx. The children attend Hebrew classes, and receive special tuition from Jewish scholars.

1919
Commutes to high school in Manhattan. He adopts the middle name Benedict, after his Hebrew name Baruch.
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1922
Begins drawing classes at the Art Students League, where he befriends young artist Adolph Gottlieb.

1923
Attends City College of New York, majoring in philosophy.

1927
Enters his father's business to build up savings to support himself as an artist. After the 1929 crash, he stays on to try to keep the company solvent.
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1931
As the family business founders, Newman becomes a substitute art teacher, earning $7.50 a day.

New York World-Telegram, November 4, 1933 Barnett Newman Foundation, New York

1933
Offers himself as a last-minute candidate for election as New York City mayor, advocating a civic art programme with the manifesto 'On the Need for Political Action by Men of Culture'. During the 1930s he counts himself a committed anarchist.

1936
Publishes The Answer - America's Civil Service Magazine, which closes after the first issue. Marries Annalee Greenhouse, a shorthand writing teacher.

1937
Abraham Newman suffers a heart attack. The family business is liquidated.

1938
After failing the exam to become a fully-qualified art teacher, Newman organises Can We Draw? The Board of Examiners Says-No!, an exhibition of work by himself and others rejected by the board.
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Photobooth portrait of Annalee and Barnett Newman, c.1940 Barnett Newman Foundation, New York

1940
Gives up substitute teaching for a part-time job teaching silk-screen printing and batik to adults. He spends his spare time at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and the American Museum of Natural History.

1941
Barnett and Annalee spend the summer taking botany and ornithology classes at Cornell University.

1942
During the Second World War, Newman is disqualified from military service on physical grounds. He applies to be classified as a conscientious objector.

1943
Meets Betty Parsons, who runs a small gallery in the Wakefield Bookshop at 64 East 55th Street, New York. They develop a close working relationship.
Newman leads a protest against the conservative jury for an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. With friends Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko and Milton Avery, he mounts a counter-exhibition.

1944
Organises the exhibition Pre-Columbian Stone Sculpture at the Wakefield Gallery. He also completes a number of drawings and watercolours, his earliest surviving works.

1945
Paints his first known work on canvas. During the next few years, he continues to draw and paint, but also writes art criticism.

1946
Betty Parsons opens her own gallery in New York, and Newman organises the first exhibition, Northwest Coast Indian Painting. He joins the gallery's roster of artists alongside his friends Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. The following year, Jackson Pollock also joins.

1947
Organises The Ideographic Picture at the Betty Parsons Gallery, including work by Rothko, Still and himself. He stops teaching. For the next seventeen years, Annalee supports her husband on her teacher's salary. The first Newman painting to be sold is Euclidian Abyss (1946-47).

1948
Paints Onement I, which he views as a major breakthrough. He publishes the essay 'The Sublime is Now', arguing for a new type of art, free from the weight of European tradition.

1949
Makes seventeen paintings, the most he will ever complete in a single year.
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1950
His first solo exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery receives a largely negative response. One painting is sold.

Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock and Tony Smith with Vir Heroicus Sublimis at Newman's exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery, 1951 Photograph by Hans Namuth © Hans Namuth Ltd, New York

1951
His second exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery is condemned by critics. No paintings are sold. His work wouldn't be shown again for four and a half years.

1955
At fifty, Newman has sold only a few paintings. Although Annalee holds two teaching jobs, their financial situation is precarious. They take loans, and pawn some valuables. Newman makes one very large painting, Uriel, then stops painting for over two years.

1957
Suffers a heart attack and is hospitalised for six weeks.

 

Barnett Newman: A Retrospective installed in the New Gallery at Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont 1958 The Barnett Newman Foundation, New York

1958
Slowly recuperating, Newman completes three paintings. His work appears in The New American Painting, organised by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which travels across Europe. Barnett Newman: First Retrospective Exhibition opens at Bennington College in Vermont, with a catalogue essay by Clement Greenberg.

1959
A number of major museums purchase his paintings. The exhibition Barnett Newman: A Selection 1946-1952 receives largely negative reviews, but attracts the interest of the younger generation of New York artists.
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1960
Formulates a series of paintings that will become The Stations of the Cross.

1962
Newman-De Kooning, an exhibition of 'two founding fathers', opens at the Allan Stone Gallery in New York.

1963
Contributes to the exhibition Recent American Synagogue Architecture at the Jewish Museum in New York.

1964
The Newmans travel to Europe for the first time, visiting England, Switzerland, Germany, and France. Annalee retires from teaching.

Newman and his synagogue model in his Front Street studio, 1965 Barnett Newman Foundation, New York Photograph by Ugo Mulas © Ugo Mulas Estate, Milan. All rights reserved.

1965
Newman and six younger artists, including Donald Judd and Frank Stella, represent the US at the São Paulo Bienal. After the opening, the Newmans spend a month in Brazil.

1966
The Stations of the Cross opens at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. It is Newman's first solo museum exhibition and, although the critical reception is mixed, earns him wide recognition.

1967
Versions of his monumental steel sculpture Broken Obelisk are installed in front of the Seagram Building in New York, and in Washington, D.C.

1968
Completes his largest painting, Anna's Light, named in honour of his mother, who died in 1965. He also makes the sculpture Lace Curtain for Mayor Daley in protest against police brutality towards anti-Vietnam War demonstrators.

1969
His first one-man gallery show in ten years opens in New York. The show is widely covered and generally praised.
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1970
Newman dies of a heart attack in New York, on 4th July, aged 65.
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