Play

Will Barnet (1911 – 2012, American) “Play” - This work of art is titled, designated “Artist’s Proof”, and signed in ink along the lower margin. The 16 x 11.25-inch sheet has been matted and placed in a 20.25 x 16.25-inch black metal frame. The image is after the 1975 limited-edition print which was based on Barnet’s earlier 1975 watercolor and oil painting of a nude woman with long brown hair covering her eyes. She is lying in the branches of a tree, dangling a rope, and playing with the two cats on the ground. (See last photo). In the later print, the figure of the woman in the tree is clothed and the background is a gradation of rainbow colors.

Will Barnet was an American artist 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. His earliest works were influenced by expressionism; these were followed by abstract works in the 1950s and 1960s, and finally evolved into more figurative works of silhouetted forms set against geometrically designed backgrounds. Barnet’s work may be found in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.