Monday February 20th, 2023

7:00 PM - 8:30 PM EST (Zoom)

Johnson and Stavisky question the late nearly centenarian artist, Will Barnet in one of five of his appearances at Artist Talk on Art. Barnet is considered one of the greatest American artists of the 20th Century.

At the time of his death at 101, in 2012, Barnet was a print maker and painter known for beautiful portraits and classically composed visions of animals, flowers, women and children. He donated numerous works to ATOA auctions. a print maker and painter known for elegantly stylized portraits and classically composed visions of beautiful women and children. He had lived in the National Arts Club building on Gramercy Park since 1982.

Barnet attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and, on a scholarship, went to New York to study at the Art Students League, arriving in 1931, he once said, with $10 and a portfolio of seascapes and portraits of the family cat. He worked briefly under Stuart Davis and became enamored with Arshile Gorky. Barnet started out as a Social Realist print maker responding to the struggles of ordinary people during the Depression.

On one panel at ATOA, Barnet stated that "before WWII most artists were outer directed, while after the war they became inner directed."