This gallery presents what many consider American painter Barnett Newman’s greatest achievement—The Stations of the Cross. Newman began the cycle of 15 canvases in 1958 while recovering from a heart attack. The abstract expressionist painter continued the series over the next eight years, finally adding a coda, Be II.
Newman’s title for the series was met with confusion when it was first exhibited in 1966. The artist explained that the paintings were not a story but rather “a complete statement of a single subject,” namely Jesus’s cry from the cross, lema sabachthani (Why have you forsaken me?). Newman did not intend for the series to represent the narrative but rather be an expression “of each man's agony.”
