“Canto XIII,” created by artist Barnett Newman in 1964, is an abstract work that is part of the Color Field Painting movement and belongs to Newman’s “18 Cantos” series. This art piece, like others in the series, explores the use of color and composition in a minimalist yet impactful way.
The artwork features two distinct vertical color fields. On the left, there is a bold, flat yellow rectangle, vivid and unmodulated. Adjacent to it on the right is a darker olive or moss green field, which looks to have a textured surface with visible variations in hue and intensity. These two blocks of color are set against a white background that frames the composition. The contrast between the colors, the impression of texture in the green block against the flatness of the yellow, and the simple yet deliberate juxtaposition of both fields are characteristic of Newman’s work, where he often focused on the spatial structures of color and the viewer’s experience of the scale and surface.