Will Barnet “Self-Portraits and Family”

Alexandre Gallery

[Image: Will Barnet "Self Portrait with Minou" (1991) oil on canvas, 29 ¼ x 28 ½ in.]

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Through twelve paintings and drawings from the artist’s estate, this show explores Will Barnet’s (American, 1911 – 2012) artistic and personal life’s journey through portraiture. Like his portraits of collectors, family and friends, Barnet paints himself either within a domestic environment or his studio, and often with his beloved wife and muse, Elena.

In 1931, in the midst of the Great Depression and just nineteen years old, Barnet moved to New York City where he believed he would find the environment that would help him flourish as a modern artist. He was awarded a full scholarship to study at the Arts Students League. During this formative period, Barnet supported himself as a master printmaker at the League and assisted artists including Jose Clemente Orozco, Charles White and Louise Bourgeois. These early, strong varying influences set the stage for Barnet’s long career and established his equal interest in both the representational and the abstract, each of which were dominant in different periods of his work.

In 2011, Barnet was awarded the National Medal of Arts in a White House ceremony by President Obama, who noted that “his nuanced and graceful depictions of family and personal scenes, for which he is best known, are meticulously constructed of flat planes that reveal a lifelong exploration of abstraction, expressionism and geometry.”