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Will Barnet
1911 - 2012

American
Social Realism, Indian Space Painting
Painters
Will Barnet owned a house in East Hampton during the 1970s and summered on the East End for many years. As with numerous artists of his generation, his work of the 1930s embraced social realism, and his earliest influences included Daumier, Orozco, and Marsh. In the 1940s he turned to a “clear-edge” abstract geometric style that reflected the influence of Picasso’s Synthetic Cubism. During the 1950s, he was associated with "Indian Space" painting—a style whose spare, flat shapes and dynamism also informed the work of Peter Busa and Adolph Gottlieb, among others. “I was looking for a more modern concept of space,” Barnet has said, “and Indian art showed me the way.” He returned to figuration in the 1960s. The portraits and figure studies, often of family members, were simplified, consisting of silhouettes set against large planes of color. These later works balanced the formal demands of abstraction with the humanistic content of representation. [Mark Segal]
Will Barnet owned a house in East Hampton during the 1970s and summered on the East End for many years.
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External Resources
    NYC- ARTS profile on the Artist
    Archives of American Art Oral History Interview
Organizations and Events
  • Art Students League
    (employed faculty member)
  • Art Students League
    (was attended by)
  • American Abstract Artists
    (member)
  • Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project (FAP)
    (member)
  • Art Students League
    (employed faculty member)
  • Art Students League
    (was attended by)
  • Dark Images, Bright Prospects: The Survival of the Figure After World War II
    (was included in)
  • Gifts for a New Century
    (was included in)
  • "As American As...": 100 Works from the Collection of the Parrish Art Museum
    (was included in)
  • The Nature of Seeing: Works from the Collection
    (was included in)
  • Romance and Solitude: A Selection of American Prints 1900-1941 from the Collection of Theodore C. Rogers
    (was included in)
  • Conversations Around A Collection: Acquisitions 1999-2001
    (was included in)
  • Recent Acquisitions: Framing the Collection
    (was included in)
  • People, Places and Things
    (was included in)
  • American Master Drawings
    (was included in)
Social Networks
  • Peter Busa
    (associate)
Artists from same movement
  • Will Barnet
  • George Wesley Bellows
  • Paul Cadmus
  • Philip Guston
  • Robert Gwathmey
  • Theo Hios
  • Charles Pollock
  • Moses Soyer
  • Raphael Soyer
  • George Tooker
  • Ben Shahn
  • Peter Busa
Places
  • East Hampton
    (lived in, 1970s)
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