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.”

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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