Possibly, the Stedelijk Museum had the most important Barnett Newman painting in their collection until……Who’s afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III was destroyed by a mentally unstable artist . The painting was cut several times, over almost its total length of 5 meters with a Stanley knife. Destroying the painting completely.
There was an attempt to restore the painting by Goldreyer, but the result was just an overpainted painting without any nuances in the monochrome colors. This restoration resulted in a lawsuit in which there had to be decided who was responsible. Goldreyer claimed 250 million with the Amsterdam Municipality. The result Goldreyer had to be compensated and the Stedelijk Museum “lost” its beautiful iconic colourfield painting because of the bad restoration. The last few years the painting Who’s afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III is on and off on show again in the Stedelijk, but unfortunately the restoration has devalued it tremendously in a financial and artistic way. www.ftn-books.com has the Stedelijk Museum catalogue ( a.o. Newman titles ) for the Barnett Newman exhibition for sale.
There is an article on Newman and its destruction in the Stedelijk by the New York times over here:
