Will Barnet's career has spanned nearly eight decades during which he successively embraced different styles, abstract and figurative. The five drawings recently donated to the Morgan by the artist provide a survey of his evolution. The three earliest works, from the 1940s and 50s reflect Barnet's involvement with the so-called Indian Space Painters, a group of artists who set out to create a specifically American abstract style by looking for inspiration in Native American art. Fond of using found paper as a support, Barnet created one of these pictographic compositions over and around the lettering of a 1956 charity ball program for the fundraising arm of a Black civil rights organization.
Study for Big Duluth is one of many studies for a monumental painting Barnett made following a summer residency at the University of Minnesota at Duluth. The stark, semi-abstract landscape was inspired by the view of sun, moon and stars reflected across the surface of Lake Superior.