The Many Roles of Bernard Arnest
Photo by Myron Wood of Bernard Arnest in 1950s. Colorado College Special Collections
Though known primarily as an artist, Bernard Arnest held a variety of responsibilities in his 69 years. Between his education at the Fine Art Center Art School and his eventual retirement, Arnest was a serviceman, cultural ambassador, art education consultant, and, for longer than any other position, professor and chair of the Colorado College Art Department. Arnest found opportunities to make art across his vast array of titles throughout the world. The intelligence, skill, and contemplativeness seen in his work—paired with a series of fortunately timed events—carved out many paths for the artist. Today, we have a rich body of work culminating in the 1974-1975 series, Scenes from Life.
While his work took him internationally, Arnest’s return to teach at Colorado College in 1957 signaled a homecoming to his birth state. Arnest was born in Denver, Colorado on February 19, 1917. After attending Denver East High School, where his desire to pursue art professionally began, he would go on to study art at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center under acclaimed artists Boardman Robinson and Henry Varnum Poor.
Following his studies, Arnest lived briefly in San Francisco and exhibited his first one-man show at the San Francisco Museum of Art.1 But the Second World War had other plans. He joined World War II and quickly became Chief War Artist for the U.S. Army. Once discharged from the war, he lived in New York for two years. His time there proved fruitful: in 1947, he began a life-long affiliation with Kraushaar Galleries and he exhibited for the first of four times at the Whitney Annual.2
In the following decade, Arnest taught at both the Minneapolis School of Art (now Minneapolis College of Art and Design) and the University of Minnesota. He also continued exhibiting across the country. In 1948, he married his life partner, Barbara Maurin, with whom he would have three children. In 1960, the U.S. Department of State commissioned Arnest to paint in Afghanistan.
Arnest returned to Colorado in 1957 to teach at Colorado College and head the Fine Arts Center art school (which would eventually become the Art Department as it is known today). He worked for CC until his retirement in 1982, spending 17 years out of the 25 years at the college as chair.
In trying to keep faithful to Arnest’s original vision for this project and owing to the existence of well-publicized and well-written biographies of the artist, this site does not try to provide an exhaustive account of Arnest’s life. Still, as Scenes from Life is Arnest’s most expansive and important body of work, a general understanding of the artist’s earlier periods is necessary. As such, three pages on this site cover three scenes from the artist’s own life that proved most consequential in the creation of his culminating series.
Read more about various stages of the artist's life on the following pages:
[1] B.N., “Faculty Profile: Bernard Arnest, Artist and Teacher,” Colorado College Bulletin, December 1981, 15.
[2] “Bernard Arnest,” faculty biography, Tutt Library Special Collections, 2.