Will Barnet

Will Barnet (May 25, 1911 – November 13, 2012) was an American visual artist and teacher, known for his paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints depicting the human figure and animals, both in casual scenes of daily life and in transcendent dreamlike worlds. He studied the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston & the Art Students League of New York.

In 1936, he became the official printer for the Art Students League of New York. He taught art alongside the likes of Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Robert Beverly Hale and Richard Pousette-Dart. There, he later instructed students in the graphic arts at the school. Barnet taught and mentored the early careers of artists Audrey Flack, Emily Mason, Brett Bigbee, Mavis Pusey, Lois Dodd, Raymond A. Whyte, Mark Rothko, and Jim Rosenquist.

Barnet's works span the various "movements" of their era, from his early social realist work to his final signature style of clean lines and carefully placed volumes of solid color in a kind of minimalist representational approach. His work is concerned with humanity, yet at his core he always remained a formalist, cerebral in his approach to the elements that make up a good picture. In his interviews he articulated his well thought out principles regarding color use, composition and subject matter, in a professorial manner reflecting the theoretical acumen he brought to his teaching. Like many American painters of his generation he was digesting the evolving trends in Europe and integrating the new visual vocabulary into his American style while remaining universal, referencing his own personal history with images of his wife, his daughter, and their family pets. As James Thomas Flexner wrote, Barnet's work "makes us experience the interplay between the personal and the universal." While remaining representational, the simple elegance of the figures and their flat surfaces reflect his exploration with abstraction.

Barnet was a longtime resident of the National Arts Club. He died on November 13, 2012, at the age of 101, in New York City.

SOURCE - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Barnet (Aug, 2025)