Sale 2535 - African-American Fine Art, April 2, 2020

Artist Ernie Barnes was born July 15, 1938 in Durham, North Carolina during the height of the Jim Crow Era. His parents lived in a home in a section of the city called “The Bottom.” His father, Ernest Barnes, Sr., was a shipping clerk for Liggett & Myers tobacco company. His mother, Fannie Geer Barnes, supervised the household for a prom­ inent attorney. On days he accompanied his mother to work, the attorney would share his extensive art book collection with Barnes. By elementary school, Barnes was already familiar with the Old Master painters. Bullied as a child for his shyness and sensitivity, Barnes found solace in drawing. In his freshman year, a weightlifting coach placed Barnes on a fitness program which taught him effort and discipline. By his senior year at segregated Hillside High School, Barnes was captain of the football team and state champion in the shot put. Barnes earned a full athletic scholarship to North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University) where his art instructor, sculptor Ed Wilson, encouraged him to create images from his own life experiences. In 1960, Barnes was one of 30 African Americans drafted into the National Football League. (He was one of nine players selected that year from a Historically Black College and University.) For five seasons, Barnes was an offensive lineman for the New York Titans, San Diego Chargers and Denver Broncos. In 1965 New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin paid Barnes a season’s salary “to paint” and subsequently sponsored Ernie Barnes’s first solo art exhibition ERNIE BARNES (1938 - 2009) © Peter Read Miller. Courtesy of the Ernie Barnes Estate.