Will Barnet’s works have been influenced by various art movements ranging from the Social Realism of the 1930’s to abstract art, but he has continually emphasized the preeminence of the human figure. Often using members of his family or friends as models, he is more interested in capturing the psyche rather than the physical likeness of an individual.

Barnet was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1911. He studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School and Art Students League, New York. In 1934, he was appointed the official printer of the League, and in 1936, became an instructor in painting, a position he still holds. He is also an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

Barnet has received numerous prizes and awards for his works, including the Walter Lippincott Prize (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1968) and the Benjamin Altman First Prize (National Academy of Design, 1977) during 1979 and 1980, the Neuberger Museum in Purchase, New York, and the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida, hosted the retrospective exhibit “Will Barnet: Twenty Years of Painting and Drawing.”

The artist has also been the subject of several books and catalogs, including WILL BARNET - 27 MASTER PRINTS (Harry N. Abrams, pub., 1979) and WILL BARNET: TWENTY YEARS OF PAINTING AND DRAWING (Neuberger Museum, 1979).

Will Barnet is one of America’s foremost artists. Among the many major museums which have collected his works are: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Brooklyn Museum, N.Y.; Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Cincinnati Art Museum; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Ma.; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Seattle Art Museum and Tweed Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

In the book, WILL BARNET: TWENTY YEARS OF PAINTING AND DRAWING, Katherine Kuh discusses Barnet’s works: “That Barnet has looked long and affectionately at Japanese prints is evident for his work shares with them a parallel clarity, purity, and rhythmic order. Whether in paintings or prints his figures have more to do with revery than loneliness, and though they exist in their own remote ambience they seem forever rooted in a world of peace and stability.

In the same book, Burt chernow summarizes the importance of Will Barnet: “Will Barnet’s work has found a growing audience, and his quiet paintings have proved that they can, like a whisper, communicate where louder statements have not.”