The Menil hosts "Anna’s Light" by Barnett Newman

Monday, 01 October 2007 23:36

Houston, TX - An extraordinary work returns to America for a brief visit to the Menil: Anna’s Light by Barnett Newman (1905-1970). The painting, which the artist completed in 1968 in memory of his mother, is on special loan from the Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art in Nagoya, Japan. (The Kawamura is building a new facility, with space specifically designed for this remarkable painting; in 2010, the museum will present the exhibition, “Barnett Newman: Paths to Anna's Light.)

The artist’s largest painting, measuring 108.7 x 240.6 in, Anna’s Light is a vast rectangle of a mysterious, primal color (red-orange to some eyes, coral or cardamom red to others), flanked by two thin strips of white that seem to barely contain a work that Yve-Alain Boise called “oceanic — perhaps Newman’s most powerful.”

The painting blazes across one wall of the Menil’s 20^th century galleries, in a room with other Newman works. This, too, is something of a brief homecoming for a seminal work of art: Anna’s Light was once part of the permanent collection of the Dia Art Foundation (an organization founded by members of the de Menil family), and it was installed in the Menil’s foyer when the museum opened in June 1987.

“It is wonderful to be able to welcome Anna’s Light back to the Menil during our twentieth anniversary year,” said Menil director Josef Helfenstein. “This may be the last time this great painting can be seen outside of Japan.”

The Menil Collection,
located within Houston’s Museum District
is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Admission and parking are free.