Will Barnet is center stage again, this time in an ARTnews review featuring our Will Barnet: A Sketchbook, 1932–1934. Here's what Deidre S. Greben says about the title:
"Will Barnet: A Sketchbook, 1932–1934 is an excursion unto itself. Discovered in files buried in Barnet's studio, the plein-air sketches of lovers, strollers, thinkers, and loungers were a relief from the labored compositions of the artist's early academic training. Their only purpose was the delight he obviously felt in making them. As a New Englander just arrived in New York, Barnet was drawn to Central Park, which he called a front lawn for Depression-era city dwellers packed into airless tenements. These bold, direct drawings capture the openness of the setting, but also the subtle interactions among the figures. As critic Robert C. Morgan keenly note in his introduction, these are intimate even romantic works of youthful discover, yet they suggest the foundations of a classicism that was to characterize Barnet's long career."
"Will Barnet: A Sketchbook, 1932–1934 is an excursion unto itself. Discovered in files buried in Barnet's studio, the plein-air sketches of lovers, strollers, thinkers, and loungers were a relief from the labored compositions of the artist's early academic training. Their only purpose was the delight he obviously felt in making them. As a New Englander just arrived in New York, Barnet was drawn to Central Park, which he called a front lawn for Depression-era city dwellers packed into airless tenements. These bold, direct drawings capture the openness of the setting, but also the subtle interactions among the figures. As critic Robert C. Morgan keenly note in his introduction, these are intimate even romantic works of youthful discover, yet they suggest the foundations of a classicism that was to characterize Barnet's long career."
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