Biography

Who Was Virginia Barnes?

Virginia Barnes (1895 -1984) was a prolific American artist who studied, taught, and lived in Montevallo, Alabama, for much of her life. Barnes was born in Livingston, Alabama, on May 19, 1895. She attended the State Normal School in Livingston from which she was granted an academic, art, and portrait diploma. Barnes earned her A.B. from Alabama College in 1939. She also attended Agnes Scott College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during her collegiate career. Barnes completed her M.A. at Columbia University.

In 1939, Barnes began her teaching career at Montevallo High School. Barnes returned to her alma mater, Alabama College (which became the University of Montevallo in 1969), to teach in the Art Department from 1942-1965. During her tenure here, she spent the summers of 1950 and 1951 at Hans Hofmann’s Provincetown school. Hofmann (1880-1966) was a German-born American artist, primarily associated with Abstract Expressionism. Hofmann’s use of color, his energetic compositions, and his innovations relative to genre and style in painting influenced scores of art students in Europe and in the U.S., including Barnes.

While Barnes’ training connected her to the New York art world, she was also deeply engaged with state and regional arts groups. Barnes was an active member of the Alabama Art League, an organization of artists from around the state who worked to establish the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in 1930. Barnes exhibited in the first show that the League hosted, and she continued to participate in it for the duration of her career. She was also an active member of the Water Color Society of Alabama and helped organize its juried exhibitions at venues like the Birmingham Museum of Art. During her lifetime and posthumously her works were exhibited and collected by museums around the U.S. and abroad. In Alabama, Barnes’ artworks can be found in collections at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, and the University of Montevallo.

Early in her career, Barnes was known as a portraitist, but she is most celebrated for her work with screen-printing, woodcut, and watercolor. Most of the examples in the University of Montevallo Collection are prints that were made with these processes during her later life. Barnes maintained an active studio practice through the 1980s. She died at the age of 89, in 1984.