Will Barnet (May 25, 1911 – November 13, 2012)[1][2] was an American visual artist and teacher, 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.

Barnet taught and mentored the early careers of artists Audrey Flack, Emily Mason, Brett Bigbee, Lois Dodd, Raymond A. Whyte,[6] Mark Rothko,[4] and Jim Rosenquist.

[7] Barnet influenced a generation of artists, including James Rosenquist, Knox Martin, Emil Milan, Paul Jenkins, Ethel Fisher and Cy Twombly.

In his interviews he articulated his well thought out principles regarding color use, composition and subject matter, in a professorial manner reflecting the theoretical acumen he brought to his teaching.

His early work is decidedly social realist, with sullen portraits done in dark tonalities that suggest both the struggle of the depression era and the hope in the simple love of family life.

He moves out of this phase with the improving economy and in the 1940s adds vibrant color and more abstract figures, suggesting a lifting of the depression era malaise.

[10] In the 1950s he evolved into his form of Abstract Expressionism, which is more studied and less "spontaneous", creating formally pleasing paintings of well ordered shape and color.

Barnet defined an artistic career that, in the words of Robert Doty, "has always gone beyond the limitations of modern art because his work affirms a faith in life."