Newman may appear to concentrate on shape and color, but he
insisted that his canvases were charged with symbolic meaning.
Like Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich before him, he believed
in the spiritual content of abstract art. The very title of this
painting—in English, "Man, heroic and sublime"—points to
aspirations of transcendence. Abstract Expressionism is often
called "action painting," but Newman was one of the several
Abstract Expressionists who eliminated signs of the action of
the painter's hand, preferring to work with broad, even expanses
of deep color. Vir Heroicus Sublimis is large enough so that
when the viewer stands close to it, as Newman intended, it
creates an engulfing environment—a vast red field, broken by
five thin vertical stripes. Newman admired Alberto Giacometti's
bone-thin sculptures of the human figure, and his stripes, or
"zips," as he called them, may be seen as symbolizing figures
against a void. Here they vary in width, color, and firmness of
edge: the white zip at center lef