Robert Barber 100th Birthday July 30, 2022
In July of 2013 with Anne-Marie Russell, then director and chief curator of Moca Tucson, I visited the Arizona Biennial at the Tucson Museum of Art. Out of the 80 pieces that had been selected from 1250 works submitted, two stood out immediately. Anne-Marie spotted them first, and excitedly beckoned me to come over to where she was standing in front of them, somewhat in awe. They were two small still lives of broken down cardboard Dos Equis boxes, and to say they caught our attention would be an understatement. Upon looking at the label I saw that the artist’s name was Robert Barber, and that he was born in 1922. Thus began a highly unexpected, serendipitous, and incredibly rewarding arc of discovery and recognition for Robert at age 92, a story that happily is ongoing as he celebrates his 100th birthday today, July 30th, 2022.
When Anne-Marie and I tracked down Robert and went to his house we were astounded. Still painting and drawing on a daily basis, inspired and spry, meeting him was a joy and sorting through the fruits of his decades-long commitment to his art was both thrilling and daunting. It should be noted that outside of a few local exhibitions, including state fairs, he was virtually unknown but had been formally and classically trained, with an undergraduate degree from the Minneapolis School of Art (now the Minneapolis School of Art & Design) and an MFA from the University of Minnesota, where he studied under luminaries such as Ray Parker and Phillip Guston. He’d also served in the Navy during World War II, raised two children with his beloved wife and fellow artist Fran, and was a sixth grade teacher for 30 years. All the while, he diligently and doggedly pursued his vocation, and despite a lack of response, was still sending out slides of his work for consideration a few months before we so fortuitously “found” him.
Summarizing Robert’s path out of obscurity is not the intent here, though it would be remiss not to acknowledge Anne-Marie Russell for instigating and co-curating Robert’s retrospective at Moca Tucson in 2015, which led to Kerry Schuss’ representation of and tireless efforts to successfully bring Robert’s art to a broader audience. Schuss has mounted four solo exhibitions of Robert's work at his New York gallery, along with two solo art fair booth presentations since 2016. Also, Rene Paul Barilleaux of the McNay Museum, who as guest curator chose Robert for the Arizona Biennale, had the good fortune to set things in motion, and Souhad Rafey, curator of The American Academy of Arts and Letters, included his work in their 2018 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts. That led to the placement of two of his paintings in the collection the Minneapolis Institute of Art, which constituted an extremely meaningful homecoming for Robert. The energy and efforts of these individuals must be acknowledged, as are the others who have helped along the way. But really the intent here is a sincere appreciation of Robert Barber himself, a truly extraordinary, humble, and remarkably talented human being who faced indifference and adversity with a sense of perseverance that borders on the heroic. Marrying relentless persistence to formally rigorous and graceful execution in what he has made, he luckily, for him and his newfound audience, late in life has been able to share the fruits of his achievements with the world. For this we can all be profoundly grateful.
- Jocko Weyland