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ROBERT BARANET, Artist

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, December 19th,1925, Robert Baranet's career as an artist began when he did portrait sketches outside of the local drugstore in exchange for milkshakes. He was 13 years old. Baranet's first award for artistic merit came when he entered a Scholastic Magazine contest as a student at the Temple University High School. He won a certificate of merit in the National High School Art Exhibit at the Carnegie Institute.

He was later to enroll at the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, (PAFA), the oldest fine arts school in America, established in 1806, and in 1946 was invited to study with Dr. Albert Barnes at the famed Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania. It was at the Barnes that Baranet became something of a protege of the well-known collector, and was present when several of the now-famous works such as Matisse's 'Bathers' were acquired by Barnes on his many collecting sojourns throughout Europe. Baranet also became close friends during that time with Violette de Mazia, Barnes' administrative director. It was a friendship which would last until her death many years later.

In 1946, Robert had an unfortunate accident while working one summer in a steel mill to help put himself through art school. When a piece of metal struck his eye he was hospitalized and told he would most likely lose the eye. This would have meant his career as a painter would be over before it began, as he would no longer have the necessary depth perception needed in order to paint.

Mysteriously, the foremost eye surgeon in the country appeared to treat Robert, using a dangerously experimental procedure that ultimately saved the afflicted eye. Just as mysteriously, when Baranet's father, Jack, went to pay the hospital bill, it had already been 'taken care of' anonymously. Robert always assumed that it must have been Dr.Barnes, as Barnes had made his sizable fortune on the patent of the eye drops called, 'Argerol', and had been an eye doctor by profession.

In May of 1948, age 22, Robert Baranet was awarded the prestigious William Emlen Cresson award for study and travel in Europe by PAFA. It was the most sought-after scholarship and award given by the school. Baranet also studied at the Grand Chaumiere, in Paris, France during this same period. He later graduated from PAFA and established himself in a studio in Philadelphia, continuing to paint, focusing his abilities on portraiture. During that time, the famous Jazz trumpeter, Dizzy Gillespie, befriended young Baranet, as Gillespie lived in the neighborhood and would often stop by to play or discuss music. It was then that a life-long appreciation of Jazz and Classical music was begun. In June of 1950 Robert married fellow PAFA student and sculptor, Elizabeth Ferzacca. The couple spent the next 3 years living in Italy, France and Spain, painting and sculpting. Their first child, Peter, was born in Rome in 1952. Baranet's family lived for some time in Majorca, Spain where the author, Robert Graves, and his wife and son were good friends as well as neighbors. In 1954, Robert Baranet moved to West Virginia to assist his father-in-law with business affairs as well as launching his own entrepreneurial venture in oil and gas well drilling. During that time, Robert maintained a painting studio in the town and painted portraits of his wife and children as well as friends and acquaintances whose faces he found interesting. He also painted still life and landscape works. Robert won several awards for painting in regional shows such as 'Exhibition 80' in Huntington, WVa, and painted stage sets with his wife, Elizabeth, for local productions such as "Brigadoon", "Tea House of the August Moon" and "Arsenic and Old Lace", to name a few. He traveled to new York frequently during the 1950's and it was on one such trip that he met the painter Mark Rothko, through their mutual friend, William Scharf. Rothko's large,dramatic, broodingly philosophical paintings had a profound effect on Robert at that time and the two spent many hours discussing the Abstract Expressionist Movement. In 1965, at the age of 40, Baranet decided it was time to devote himself exclusively to his painting career, and moved his wife and four children to Rowayton, Connecticut. He also found a large painting studio/apartment at the famed Hotel Des Artistes on Manhattan's Central Park West. It had been built in the 1920's as artists' studios, and this particular one had been originally owned by the silent film star, Rudolf Valentino. The Hotel was home to the well-known, Cafe Des Artistes, whose walls were covered with charming nudes painted by American illustrator, Howard Chandler Christy.

In 1967, Robert Baranet was asked to join the ranks of portrait artists at the premier portrait gallery in New York, Portraits, Inc. on Park Avenue. It was here that he received commissions to paint prominent figures in business as well as socialites and political figures. He executed portraits of Marguerite Pindling, wife of the Premier of the Bahamas, Lyndon Pindling; Sheila Hailey, wife of author Arthur Hailey; Tauni, the Countess de Lesseps; Mrs. Douglas Cooper and the actress Joan Collins. His portrait of Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia was hung at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C.   Baranet had several shows of landscapes, most notably in the Bahamas at Lyford Cay Gallery, where he had several exhibitions in the 1970's and 1980's.  He was in the Bahamas and Jamaica frequently to paint commissioned portraits, in his spare time painting brightly-colored abstract canvases influenced by the tropical lushness around him. Throughout his active career as a portrait painter, Baranet continued painting landscapes and abstract works both in his converted barn in Connecticut, and his studio in New York. He painted landscapes in locations spanning such diverse regions as the Caribbean, New England, the Southwest, Europe and Appalachia. Baranet called his new style 'Romantic Impressionism'. He had admired the paintings of J.M.W.Turner and was influenced by the light and ethereal quality of Turner's later works. In the early 1980's, Baranet was invited to join the prestigious Silvermine Guild of Arts in New Canaan, Connecticut, and participated in several group shows there over the years. Additionally, he was a member of and exhibited at the Rowayton Arts Center in Rowayton, Connecticut. In 1989, Robert had a one-man show at the James Hunt Barker Gallery on Nantucket, Massachusetts, as well as the James Hunt Barker Gallery in Palm Beach, Florida the following year. He began a stint teaching at the Art Students League of New York in the early 1990's, initially filling in for fellow PAFA artist and friend, William Scharf, and later signing on to teach portraiture during the summers for several years. His class was so popular with students that he was given two adjoining classrooms to accommodate the number of students, running back and forth between the two in order to teach. Baranet was listed as well at that time in "Who Was Who in American Art,1564-1975" by Peter Hastings Falk, published in 1999.

In an interview in The New Yorker Magazine, writer Mark Seavy wrote, "Not limiting himself to portraits, Baranet also produces landscapes and abstracts, saying that he feels that doing nothing but portraits causes artists to become 'burned out'.  Seavy also quotes Baranet as saying, "I may see a mood like an approaching storm and will put it on memory file and then recall it. You have to be able to interpret things, because general painting is boring. When I work with abstracts I either just start right in or have an idea beforehand." In 1996, The Carriage Barn Gallery at Waveny Park in New Canaan, Connecticut featured the abstract paintings of Baranet along with the sculpture of Lubomir Tomaszewski. The antique carriage house was a fitting setting for the large, dramatic abstracts and driftwood sculpture.  Entitled,  "Inspirations From Nature", Baranet's works were well received and the show a success.  Virginia Bates, interviewer for the Darien News, wrote of him, "Joyce Cary's classic novel,' The Horses Mouth', has as its marvelous hero, Gully Jimson, a painter whose larger-than-life vitality and enthusiasm carry the plot along like a chip on a roaring torrent. There's an artist named Robert Baranet, who could have been Cary's model."

Robert Baranet died in April 2001 at the age of 75 in Connecticut, after having recently completed a large abstract painting in the converted barn studio where he had painted for 35 years. Mark Seavy of The New Yorker Magazine earlier had quoted Robert as saying, "Artists are a curious breed…they paint because they have to do it, and damn the consequences." This was certainly true of Robert Baranet, who had spent the greater part of his life doing just that.