Will Barnet “Love Letters Paintings and Drawings”
Alexandre Gallery
[Image: Will Barnet "Double Portrait of Elena" oil on canvas, 39 1/2 x 39 1/2 in.]
This event has ended.
An exhibition of paintings and drawings celebrating the artist’s wife and muse Elena as subject. Their relationship, begun in the mid-1950s, inspired Will Barnet’s return to representational imagery and the development of his distinctive and iconic, simplified, hard-edged figurative style. Works included range in date from 1955 to 1999 and are gathered from the family’s private collection.
“It is not an exaggeration to state that Barnet’s paintings of his second wife, Elena, constitute one of the high points of American art in the 1980s, a decade when slathered paint and showmanship had become the rage. Barnet’s portraits instead embody a quiet rebuke to excess and hyperbole. Working with flat shapes and a palette of muted colors, he was able to convey a most unlikely subject: the pleasure two people take in one another’s company.” (John Yau, 2018)
“The love letters referred to in the exhibition title are, of course, the paintings, watercolors and drawings produced through the steady deepening of their marriage from passionate ardor to sustained devotion to quiet, caring fortitude at the very end. As a body of work, the exhibition celebrates that long, enduring embrace, one captured in the classical beauty, stillness and grace of Elena’s constant presence.” (Chris Crosman, 2018)
Media
Schedule
from September 18, 2018 to November 24, 2018
Opening Reception on 2018-09-22 from 14:00 to 16:00