Will Barnet
Small Works on Paper from the 1950s
September 10 – October 15, 2011

The gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of small-scale paintings on paper by Will Barnet from the 1950s. Selected from Barnet’s abstract Indian Space period, these brightly colored and carefully orchestrated works are based upon the artist’s study of Native American ideas and designs that integrated organic and geometric pictograph forms within a flat, seamless space. While working with these then new abstract ideas, Barnet maintained his reference to both the figure and the landscape — the primary subject of his work before, after and during 1950s. The exhibition will feature eighteen works selected from the artist’s own collection, most of which have not been previously exhibited. It will open concurrently with a full career retrospective of Barnet’s paintings at the National Academy Museum (September 16 – December 31, 2011).

Will Barnet, who turned 100 years old in May 2011, has enjoyed an eighty-year career as a distinguished artist and teacher since arriving in New York from Boston in 1931. He continues to live and to work at his studio home in the National Arts Club at Gramercy Park. His most recent paintings — which returned to these same abstract motifs of the 1950s — were the subject of exhibitions at Alexandre Gallery last season and at Montclair Art Museum earlier this year.