By the 1940s, Barnet was well known as a painter and printmaker. A prolific graphic artist, Barnet changed his style significantly at different points in his career. His earliest works were influenced by expressionism; they were followed by abstract works in the 1950s and 1960s, and finally evolved into more figurative works of silhouetted forms set against geometrically designed backgrounds.
His work has been exhibited in prominent museums and galleries in the United States and Canada and is included in many prestigious collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
