Autoire, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
Allier, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 inches
D'or, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
Najac, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches
Colmar, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
Apremont, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
Lorraine, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
Mont Moiral, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
Renne, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches
Sare, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches
Cantal, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches
Charente, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
HECTOR LEONARDI: NEW PAINTINGS
May 1 – May 29th, 2008
Opening reception May 1, 6 – 8 pm
Dillon Gallery is proud to announce its second one-person exhibition of paintings by Hector Leonardi. Completed in the last two years, the work highlights the extraordinary creativity and productive energy of a master of color and light.
Early on, the distinguished art critic John Russell identified Leonardi as the premier pupil in the United States of Josef Albers and praised his evocation of light, calling his painting “a work of wonderment.” More recently, writing in Art in America, critic Lyle Rexer lauded Leonardi’s art as a passionate defense of the pure visuality of painting.
Leonardi graduated from Yale with a MFA in painting in 1955 and was later a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and a Critic’s Award winner at the prestigious Tokyo Invitational. He came of age in the exciting milieu of a diverse second generation of American abstract painters, including Jules Olitski, Adolph Gottlieb, Sam Francis, and Richard Diebenkorn. The idiom Leonardi has developed reflects an awareness of all these sources as well as of the work of pioneering abstractionists Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. Yet he harnesses their insights to a very different end. Deeply influenced by the East End light in his Bridgehampton studio, Leonardi owes perhaps his greatest debt to the Impressionists and their followers, to mavericks such as Signac and Seurat. He un-tethers color from the burden of description and achieves a luminosity that only Rothko attempted. Unlike most of his abstractionist counterparts, Leonardi has never been content to mine the same imagery or to pursue a signature style. His work of the last decade in particular has ceaselessly pushed forward into new emotional and visual territory.
The thirty-eight paintings in the current exhibition show the artist at his most innovative, combining his knowledge of color and light with complex experiments in texture. On a tonal foundation of color, Leonardi builds intricate structures of acrylic fragments and over-painting to create fields in which a variety of abstract gestures, from incised marks to single drips, can coexist and enrich each other. He evokes line and form by juxtaposition. These are painterly, passionate surfaces, diaphanous and fragmentary, replete with visual contrasts suggestive of both tragedy and celebration. Leonardi has the supreme ability to unite opposites and reconcile contradictions. For poet and critic John Yau, the paintings have a deeper meaning, creating “metaphors to help one see.” For viewers, the result is a dramatic and engrossing experience, one capable of renewing faith in painting as an art of maximum risk and maximum reward.
Hector Leonardi has had more that 60 one-person shows in the United States and internationally. His work is represented in many public and private collections.
HECTOR LEONARDI: NEW PAINTINGS
May 1 – May 29th, 2008
Opening reception May 1, 6 – 8 pm
Dillon Gallery is proud to announce its second one-person exhibition of paintings by Hector Leonardi. Completed in the last two years, the work highlights the extraordinary creativity and productive energy of a master of color and light.
Early on, the distinguished art critic John Russell identified Leonardi as the premier pupil in the United States of Josef Albers and praised his evocation of light, calling his painting “a work of wonderment.” More recently, writing in Art in America, critic Lyle Rexer lauded Leonardi’s art as a passionate defense of the pure visuality of painting.
Leonardi graduated from Yale with a MFA in painting in 1955 and was later a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and a Critic’s Award winner at the prestigious Tokyo Invitational. He came of age in the exciting milieu of a diverse second generation of American abstract painters, including Jules Olitski, Adolph Gottlieb, Sam Francis, and Richard Diebenkorn. The idiom Leonardi has developed reflects an awareness of all these sources as well as of the work of pioneering abstractionists Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. Yet he harnesses their insights to a very different end. Deeply influenced by the East End light in his Bridgehampton studio, Leonardi owes perhaps his greatest debt to the Impressionists and their followers, to mavericks such as Signac and Seurat. He un-tethers color from the burden of description and achieves a luminosity that only Rothko attempted. Unlike most of his abstractionist counterparts, Leonardi has never been content to mine the same imagery or to pursue a signature style. His work of the last decade in particular has ceaselessly pushed forward into new emotional and visual territory.
The thirty-eight paintings in the current exhibition show the artist at his most innovative, combining his knowledge of color and light with complex experiments in texture. On a tonal foundation of color, Leonardi builds intricate structures of acrylic fragments and over-painting to create fields in which a variety of abstract gestures, from incised marks to single drips, can coexist and enrich each other. He evokes line and form by juxtaposition. These are painterly, passionate surfaces, diaphanous and fragmentary, replete with visual contrasts suggestive of both tragedy and celebration. Leonardi has the supreme ability to unite opposites and reconcile contradictions. For poet and critic John Yau, the paintings have a deeper meaning, creating “metaphors to help one see.” For viewers, the result is a dramatic and engrossing experience, one capable of renewing faith in painting as an art of maximum risk and maximum reward.
Hector Leonardi has had more that 60 one-person shows in the United States and internationally. His work is represented in many public and private collections.
HECTOR LEONARDI
Hector Leonardi has been communicating the joy of painting through his art for over forty years. He received a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in the early fifties and an MFA at Yale University where he studied with and was mentored by Josef Albers. His first job was as an assistant to industrial designer Russel Wright and he went on to teach basic design, color theory, and drawing at The Parsons School of Design for twenty years.Though a beloved teacher and mentor to younger artists, Leonardi’s primary focus for the last four and a half decades has been his own artwork, paintings that merge Abstract Expressionism and European Modernism into a unique painting style and technique. Throughout his career, Leonardi has had a consistent stream of solo exhibitions in prestigious New York and international galleries. He has received impressive honors and awards as well as glowing reviews in a number of publications, and his paintings are included in many private and public collections.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
- 2008 Dillon Gallery, New York
- 2006 Dillon Gallery, New York
- 2004 Gallery Terrence Denley, Birmingham, AL
- 2003 The Viewing Room Gallery, New York
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2001 Robert Steele Gallery, New York
Margaret Bodell Gallery New York
Robert Steele Gallery New York, NY - 1998 Robert Steele Gallery New York, NY
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1991 RVS Fine Art Southampton, NY
Gallery d’Arte Venice, Italy - 1990 Gallery Camino Real, Boca Raton, FL
- 1981 Mattuck Museum, Waterbury, CT
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
- Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury,
- Connecticut Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico
- Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Indiana