By Amy Zimmer
DNAinfo News Editor
GRAMERCY PARK — In the close to a century he's been on this earth, legendary painter Will Barnet has changed his style from abstract to figurative and back to abstract — but he's never altered his daily ritual of painting.
Barnet, who will celebrate his 100th birthday on May 25, can no longer stand up, but he still paints three to four hours a day in his duplex apartment in the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park, where he and his wife Elena have lived since 1982.
Managing the whirlwind of shows and celebrations of his work taking place in New York and across the country for his centennial year hasn't slowed him down either.
Since Barnet's first solo show in New York in 1935 at the Eighth Street Playhouse, his works have been added to the permanent collections of 300 museums worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. But a National Academy Museum show in September — the museum's first after a long renovation — will be his first retrospective in a New York City museum.
"I came to be an artist here. To start my career," said Barnet, who first moved to New York in 1931. "It was a deep Depression. There were bread lines and all kinds of bad things. But it was a good time for young men, ready to work. I could rent a room for $2 a night.
Barnet, a self-taught artist from Beverly, Mass., came to New York after winning a scholarship to the Arts Students League, where he studied with such greats at Stuart Davis and where he eventually spent 47 years as a teacher after a stint as the league's printmaker.
"Everything was going on at the Art Students League at that moment," he said. "It was the center of the art world.
"It was a period when you had to have a very strong feeling about being an artist," he continued, "because there was no money. But it was a very active period for people, who were very serious."
Today, he worries, the art world has become very "commercially oriented," affecting the "depth" of work.
"It takes years to develop a form of language," he said. "My paintings don't come in one day. It takes months to develop an idea. It always takes time."
A painting hanging above him of his daughter, Ona, as the Greek goddess Hera surrounded by crows, took him a few years before he was able to complete it in 1980.
"I made hundreds of sketches," he said. "It's like writing a novel. You have to get the language together properly and the story right. But it can't just be a story. It has to be a painting. The color and form is important."
When a certain artisitc style became popular, he often went in the opposite direction. When pop art and op art were big in the 1960s, he delved into figurative works, which he continued doing for 40 years. When his figurative work began to catch on, he switched back to abstract, art historians said.
"One of the things in the art world, if you get caught up in a movement it helps for your reputation," he said, "If you're a lone wolf, it's difficult."
But he never joined a movement, he said, because unlike many painters who were part of them, he had children and needed to make a living by teaching. He also taught at Cooper Union and Yale, among other places. His famous students included Mark Rothko and Alex Katz.
Despite being a self-professed "lone wolf," Barnet is very social.
"I don’t think New York has seen anything like Will as an artist," said Bruce Weber, a senior curator at the National Academy Museum.
"So many people have met him. So many people have been delighted by him. Even now, his presence at so many New York events is still there," Weber said. "I don't know if there's anybody like that. To have his energy and commitment is unrivalled."
He taught thousands of other artists, said William Meek, whose Harmon-Meek Gallery in Naples, Fla., has been representing Barnet since 1970. The gallery put on a show of Barnet's work in March, where they sold 21 prints for $1.5 million.
"To sustain a career over eight decades is quite difficult to do because the art world is always changing," Meek said. "He was able to maintain his balance during the shifting of the art world earth. There are not too many artists who are in 300 museum's permanent collections worldwide."
These collections range from the U.S. Golf Association Museum in New Jersey (a painting of a golfer) to a painting of four generations of women hanging in the modern collection of the Vatican, Meek pointed out.
Barnett is treated like royalty where he lives at the National Arts Club. Dianne Bernhard — who became the club's acting president after O. Aldon James was given a vacation as details emerged of his mismanagement — said her husband considers Barnet a mentor. She been filming Barnet over the years and hopes to make a documentary about him.
Barnet and the portrait artist Everett Raymond Kinstler — who lives upstairs from Barnet— will be speaking on Wednesday at the National Arts Club about the show they curated from the art institution's collection.
"The Artist's Eye: Will Barnet and Everett Raymond Kinstler Select from the National Arts Club Permanent Collection," 15 Gramercy Park South, May 4, 6 - 8 p.m.
"Will Barnet at 100," National Academy Museum, 1083 Fifth Ave. (between 89th and 90th Sts.), Sept. 16 – Dec. 31, 2011: A late-career museum retrospective — and his first in New York City — of the art of one of the Academy’s most distinguished members on the 100th anniversary of his birth.
