But another, Sonny Werblin of the New York Jets, offered to pay him a player’s salary to become the team’s official painter.
After a year, Barnes had built up enough of a portfolio for Werblin to sponsor Barnes’s first solo show, at the famed Grand Central Art Galleries in Midtown Manhattan.
His work, which rendered football as modern-day gladiatorial spectacle, was stylized and dramatic.
If the art world was going to reject him, then he would reject it.
“When I found out that I didn’t have to belong, really, to that world,” he said, “that was much more assuring to me as a human being.”
Persons:
Barnes, Barron Hilton, Sonny Werblin, Barnes’s, ” Barnes, ”
Organizations:
San Diego Chargers, American Football League, New York Jets, Werblin, Grand Central Art Galleries
Locations:
Midtown Manhattan, Seattle, backpedal, New York