About This Artwork

A key figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement, Barnett Newman was a brilliant colorist and a master of expansive spatial effects. For Newman, the spiritual content of art was of paramount importance and although his works seem largely focused on the formal qualities of painting, he insisted that they possess symbolic meaning. In the mid-1940s, Newman became preoccupied with the Old Testament story of Creation and began selecting titles that referenced the book of Genesis. In The Beginning, the bands of paint that emerge from the base interrupt a richly variegated field of color, a sort of primordial fog. The artist created these stripes with masking tape, which he applied to the canvas as a guideline before adding the surrounding color. This work is an important precursor to Newman’s mature paintings, which are characterized by a single vertical band, or “zip,” that divides the composition.