Under Pressure

ERNIE BARNES (1938-2009)

Under Pressure

signed 'ERNIE BARNES' (lower right)

acrylic on canvas

32 x 36 inches (81.3 x 91.4 cm)

framed: 33 3/8 x 37 3/8 inches (84.8 x 94.9 cm)

Painted circa 1966.

PROVENANCE:

Barron Hilton (1927-2019), Los Angeles, acquired directly from the artist

Estate of Barron Hilton, 2019

Their sale; Bonhams, Los Angeles, 4 August 2020, lot 136

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

EXHIBITED:

Hudson, New York, The Campus, Second Annual Exhibition, 28 June-26 October, 2025.

LITERATURE:

Under Pressure will be included in the forthcoming Ernie Barnes Catalogue Raisonné. We would like to thank Luz Rodriguez for her assistance in cataloguing this work.

NOTES:

Born in 1938 in Durham, North Carolina, Ernie Barnes (1928 - 2009) became one of the most compelling figurative painters of the twentieth century, renowned for his elongated forms and rhythmic portrayals of everyday life. Before establishing his career as an artist, Barnes was himself a professional football player, a background that gave him intimate knowledge of the sport’s choreography, intensity, and physical demands. This lived experience became a recurring theme in his practice, with football serving as both subject and metaphor in his exploration of movement, struggle, and resilience.

Painted circa 1966, Under Pressure distills this vision into an exceptionally dynamic composition. Three central figures dominate the canvas: a player in a blue jersey commands the center, arms thrust upward in a forceful T-shape, while another in blue struggles at the right edge of the frame, locked in tension with an opponent just outside the picture plane. Behind them, a figure in red strains forward, his outstretched arm reaching toward the central player. Around these figures, a flurry of additional limbs punctuates the composition, evoking the chaos and velocity of the game. The background — rendered in flashes of beige and red — dissolves into abstraction, intensifying the focus on the athletes’ bodies as sites of force and energy.

In this painting, Barnes translates the violence and rigor of sport into a language of beauty and rhythm. The players, unaware of the viewer, are absorbed wholly in the immediacy of action, their huge, muscular frames exaggerated to convey the full weight of impact and exertion. Their monumental limbs and contorted bodies underscore not only the raw physicality of the game but also its unexpected grace. By heightening scale and emphasizing strength, Barnes elevates football beyond spectacle, suggesting its symbolic weight as an arena of endurance and collective striving.

The present work also bears distinguished provenance, having once belonged to Barron Hilton (1927–2019), the American business magnate, philanthropist, and sportsman, and the second son and successor of hotelier Conrad Nicholson Hilton Sr. (1887–1979). Its presence in Hilton’s collection underscores the resonance of Barnes’s vision, bridging the worlds of athletics, art, and American cultural history.