Photo: Steven Probert
Recently exhibited at the Independent Art Fair 2025 was a focused selection of works by Ernie Barnes, presented by Ortuzar gallery. Spanning five decades, the presentation highlighted the sports scenes that are at the heart of his oeuvre, ranging from football, baseball, to track and field.
Barnes began painting sports narratives in the late 1950s, drawing on his own background as a professional athlete in the American Football League (AFL) to depict the body in motion. In his autobiography, From Pads to Palette, Barnes recalls sketching in his playbook during team meetings, often raising the ire of his coaches for drawing instead of paying attention.
The Competitive Spirit, 2005; Hitting the Tape, 2005
It was when someone bought one of those sketches that Barnes realized being an artist was a better career choice. Reflecting on his firsthand experience, Barnes sought “to tell a real truth of what it feels like to get hit, to hit, to run, to turn, to backpedal.” In the mid-1960s, Barnes retired from professional sports and turned fully to painting. During this period, he exhibited new work and became the official artist of the AFL.
Central to Barnes approach was what he described as capturing “the spiritual element of being human,” by which he meant capturing passion through bodily movement. For Barnes, football was a kinetic experience, and the distortion and elongation of his figures convey the game’s visceral energy. His serpentine figures with closed eyes and distorted limbs, take inspiration from the figuration of the Italian Mannerists and 20th century American masters, including Thomas Hart Benton, Andrew Wyeth, Reginald Marsh, Norman Rockwell, George Bellows and Charles White.
Clockwise top left: Baseball Pitcher, After Throw, 1980; Study for Baseball, 1982; Untitled, 1966; Pocket Passer, 1992
In 1984, Barnes was appointed as artist of the 1984 Los Angeles summer Olympic Games. Since then, Barnes has created some of his most iconic sports compositions, capturing the grandeur of professional play in works like Hitting the Tape (2005) and Dead Heat (2004), both of which depict the finish line of track and field games. In works such as The Competitive Spirit (2005), Barnes painted a collapsed and defeated athlete surrounded by his coaches, evoking the pathos of Michelangelo’s Pietà (1498–99) or Caravaggio’s The Entombment of Christ (1603–04).
Barnes also created the iconic painting, The Sugar Shack — two versions, in fact — which depict those same dynamic, elongated figures like athletes, dancing in a crowded Black music hall. The first was acquired by Marvin Gaye for the 1976 album, I Want You, and the second was featured in the end credits of the 1970s CBS sitcom, Good Times. The movie poster for the summer blockbuster, Sinners (2025), references that painting as well.
The Sugar Shack II, 1976
All images courtesy of the Ernie Barnes Estate, Ortuzar and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York. © Ernie Barnes Estate.
