Untitled 3

Untitled 3 is part of a series of six insistently vertical paintings exhibited by the artist at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, in 1951, in which Newman translated his signature compositions, “zip” paintings, into three-dimensional objects. Painted on canvas over an unusually thick frame, strips of cadmium red and silver gray thrust outward toward the viewer, dismantling the boundary between painting and sculpture. Concerned about the odd appearance of the deep sides of these works, the painter Jackson Pollock, a friend of Newman, constructed simple wood frames for the first three, this one included.