TitleKiesler's Last Request
Artist
Will Barnet
(American, 1911 - 2012)
Date1982
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 40 × 34 in.
Framed: 42 × 35 3/4 × 1 7/8 in.
SignedSigned at top right: "© Will Barnet '82"
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, October 3, 1984
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1984.25
Label TextThis double portrait depicts the sculptor, visionary architect, and Barnet’s longtime friend Frederick John Kiesler in company with his younger wife, the painter and art patron Lillian Kiesler. Barnet struggled with the great discrepancy in size between the couple – Kiesler was about 4’ 8’ and his wife was about 5’ 5”. In his initial painting of the couple, dating from 1963-65, now in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, he placed them together but at different ends of a couch. Shortly before his death in 1965 Kiesler asked Barnet to create a portrait that would portray him as larger in the composition. Barnet began the work but then abandoned it when his friend became ill and died. He returned to the work, finishing it in 1982, and presented it to the National Academy as his diploma piece.
