What series of paintings by Barnett Newman was inspired by the Via Dolorosa?

Barnett Newman’s series inspired by the Via Dolorosa is titled The Stations of the Cross.

Newman created the fifteen-work series between 1958 and 1966. Fourteen paintings correspond to the traditional Stations of the Cross, while the final work, Be II, serves as a coda. Rather than illustrating biblical scenes in a conventional narrative manner, Newman used stark abstract forms and restrained color to confront suffering, absence, and spiritual questioning.

The series carries the subtitle Lema Sabachthani, a transliteration of Christ’s cry from the cross, commonly translated as “Why have you forsaken me?” Newman was Jewish and secular, so the works are not straightforward devotional paintings. Their religious subject became a vehicle for considering the broader human condition, including the trauma of the Holocaust.

The Via Dolorosa is the traditional route through Jerusalem associated with Jesus’s journey to crucifixion. “Via Crucis” is another name for that route or devotional practice, but it is not the title of Newman’s painting series. The Stations of the Cross was unveiled at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1966.