Will Barnet (1911-2012) American,  Lithograph and Signed Book. Titled "The Blue Bicycle".

Depicts a woman resting on a bicycle holding a berry up to a hungry shorebird, turning to look directly at the artist/observer. Signed with copyright symbol and date (1979) in pencil bottom right. Numbered 274/300 in pencil bottom left. Title written in pencil bottom middle. Book title: Will Barnet, 27 Master Prints." Signed in ink on first page with personal message and dated Oct 23, 1980. 

Overall Size: 34 x 32 1/4 in. 

Sight Size: 28 x 26 1/2 in. 

#5137 

Will Barnet was born on May 25th, 1911 in Beverly, Massachusetts. By the age of ten he knew that he wanted to be an artist, and studied with Philip Leslie Hale at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he was able to watch John Singer Sargent at work on the murals of the Boston Public Library. In 1930 Barnet studied at the Art Students League of New York under Stuart Davis and Charles Locke, beginning his long association with the school. Here he concentrated on drawing and painting watercolors as well as printmaking, becoming their official printer in 1936. He also became a teacher of graphic arts through them, mentoring the early careers of artists Audrey Flack, Emily Mason, Brett Bigbee, Lois Dodd, Raymond A. Whyte, and Jim Rosenquist. Barnet later taught at the Cooper Union, at Yale University, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, influencing a whole generation of artists like James Rosenquist and Cy Twombly. From the 1950s onward he was represented by the Bertha Schaefer Gallery in New York City. Barnet had three sons with his first wife Mary Sinclair, and one daughter with his second wife, Elena Barnet. He was a longtime member of the National Arts Club, and his artistic output spanned eighty years, shifting from early social realism works to Modernism to Abstract Expressionism and eventually to a minimalist “clean line” approach that became his hallmark in the late 20th Century. Barnet died in New York City on November 13th, 2012, at the age of 101. His works are in many major public collections including the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Jewish Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He held nearly a hundred solo shows all around the country, and was the recipient of numerous awards including the first Artist’s Lifetime Achievement Award Medal given by the National Academy of Design, the College Art Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Lippincott Prize, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters’ Childe Hassam Prize, as well as the 2011 National Medal of Arts presented to him by President Barack Obama.