Vir Heroicus Sublimis—"Man, Heroic and Sublime" in Latin—attempts to evoke a reaction from its viewers through its overwhelming scale (his largest canvas yet at the time he released it) and saturated color.

"[3] Newman’s works are frequently referred to as deceptively simple, due to their lack of tangible subject and the fact that each canvas consists of only one or two colors.

Like his other works, Vir Heroicus Sublimis consists of a single, slightly modulated color field separated by vertical, narrow bands called "zips".

Newman explained that the function of the zips was to give the work scale and serve as a contrast to the massive color field; however, they were not to be viewed as separate entities.

Many critics, when discussing Newman, refer to his attempt to capture both the tangible and intangible, "spirit and matter", and Vir Heroicus, with its particularly large scale, as the epitome of that struggle.