Will Barnet

3 Chairs, 1991-92. Oil on canvas, 43 x 53 1/2 in. Private Collection

Vigil, 1974-75. Oil on canvas, 48 x 67 1/2 in. Private collection.

The Blue Robe, 1962. Oil on canvas, 50 x 54 in. Private Collection

The Lesson, 1984. Oil on canvas, 71 x 33 1/2 in.

Will Barnet (American born 1911) has profoundly influenced 20th century art. His works are simple yet elegant, tinged with mood. He explores social realism, abstraction, and modernism, all the while playing to fleeting emotions. His images invite reflection, evoke nostalgia, and recall poignant memories.

Grounded in classical sensibilities, the artist is always searching for clarity and harmony as he offers interpretation of life's events. What could be the mundane become the important moments of both the view and the subject.

Barnet studied at the School of Museum of fine Arts in Boston and the Art Students League in New York. He has taught at the Art Students League, Cooper Union, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Cornell and Yale Universities, and other schools. His paintings and prints, spanning social realism, abstraction, figurative work, and modernism, are in prestigious collections worldwide. (author unknown but published by Pomegranate.)

Paul Klee

Senecio, 1922. Oil on canvas mounted on panel. Kunstmuseum, Basel.

This adaptation of the human face is divided by color into rectangles. Flat geometric squares are held within a circle representing a masked face and displaying the multi-colored costume of a harlequin. A portrait of the artist-performer Senecio, it can be seen as a symbol of the shifting relationship between art, illusion and the world of drama. This painting demonstrates Klee's principles of art, in which the graphic elements of line, color planes and space are set in motion by an energy from the artist's mind. In his imaginative doodlings, he liked, in his own words, to 'take a line for a walk'.

From 1921 to 1931 he was a brilliant teacher at the Bauhaus school of design, publishing many writings on his theory of art. Two years later the Nazis exiled him from Germany, when over 100 of his works were removed from German galleries as 'degenerate.' (Butler, Van Cleave, Stirling)

Rhythm

Surface design place mat from Ikea, 2008.

Rhythmic Paper Sculpture by Emily Feth, 1947.

Fluid movement in varied periods or measures. A recurrence of featured elements or objects in the composition which recalls the main idea by repeating it in various ways. (Ralph L. Wickiser)