LeRoy Neiman

LeRoy Neiman is probably the most popular living artist in the United States. The artistic style of the fabulously successful Neiman is familiar to a remarkably broad spectrum of Americans --"rich and poor, black and white, urban and rural, educated and illiterate," and young and old alike. He was the official artist at five Olympiads. Millions of people have watched him at work: on ABC TV coverage of the Olympics, as CBS Superbowl computer artist, and at other major competitions, televised on location with his sketchbook and drawing materials, producing split-second records and highly developed images of what he is witnessing

He was born on June 8, 1927 in St. Paul, Minnesota to Charles Runquist, an unskilled laborer, and Lydia (Serline) Runquist. His surname is that of one of his stepfathers, during his childhood his biological father abandoned the family, and his mother, later remarried twice. Raised in a rough blue-collar St. Paul neighborhood, early on LeRoy Neiman became a "street kid," in his words.

He attended a Roman Catholic primary school, where was always drawing pictures and getting special treatment... showing off, copping out of other things." During recess periods he would inscribe pen-and-ink tattoos on his classmates' arms. A painting of a fish that he made in sixth grade won a prize in a national art competition. Starting in adolescence he earned money from local grocers by painting calcimine images of fruit, vegetables and meat as sale items, and portraits of the shopkeepers themselves on the windows of their stores. As a high school student, he created posters for school dances and athletic events. He participated in boxing matches in the basement of his church, which started a lifetime interest in prize fighting.

In 1942, Neiman quit school and enlisted in the United States Army. While serving as a cook for four years, with two years of combat in Europe, he painted sexually suggestive murals in military kitchens and dining halls that reportedly generated enthusiastic responses from women as well as men. He also painted stage sets for Red Cross shows under the auspices of the army's Special Services division. During this period he made his crucial discovery of the difference between the lifestyles of the officer and the PFC. This was to become the basis of his later mission in art, to investigate life's social strata from the workingman to the multimillionaire

Idle Boats, one of his earliest works in HOUSE PAINTS, won first prize in oil painting at the 1953 Twin City Show. That same year it was bought by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and thus became the first of his paintings to be purchased by a museum. Also in 1953, Neiman had his first solo shows, at galleries in Chicago and Lincoln, Illinois. He was among the artists featured in New Talent in America 1956, in Art in America (February 1956). In 1957, one of his paintings was included in the American 25th Biennial Exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., and a Neiman work displayed at the Chicago Art Exhibition, which drew 25,000 visitors, won the prize for most popular painting.

A teacher at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for 10 years early in his career, after studying there, Neiman also gained wide recognition as contributing artist for Playboy, in the 1950s. Many of his images of what he calls " the good life," have appeared in the form of etchings, lithographs, silkscreen prints, and sculptures as well as paintings, in the permanent collections of public and private museums and other institutions worldwide. These institutional acquisitions, along with sales of approximately 150,000 of his silkscreen prints to individuals, attest to the enormous appeal of his work.

In 1961, Neiman rented a studio in Paris. While living in France he did studies of the Deauville social season and of famous French restaurants, and he won a gold medal at the Salon d'Art Moderne, in Paris. Neiman also spent time in Italy, where he painted a regatta of gondoliers in Venice and the filmmaker Federico Fellini at work in Rome. His first solo shows outside the United States were held in galleries in London and Paris in 1962. After returning to the United States the next year, he established a studio in New York City. A few months later he had his first one-person exhibit in New York, at the Hammer Galleries, which has since mounted another two dozen shows of his work. Among the more than 50 additional venues in the United States and overseas that have hosted solo Neiman exhibits are the Minnesota Museum of Art, in St. Paul; the University of Texas in El Paso; the Abbey Theatre, in Dublin, Ireland; the Museo de Bellas Artes, in Caracas, Venezuela; Casagrafica, in Helsinki, Finland; and the New State Tretyakov Museum, in Moscow. In 1988, a show of his artworks toured four cities in Japan. Neiman has participated in dozens of group exhibitions as well, and in 1981, in a two-man show, with Andy Warhol, at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art. The Hermitage Museum, in St. Petersburg, Russia, which purchased 19 of his prints in 1973, is one of the many public and private institutions that hold works by him in their permanent collections. Despite such recognition, art critics have, with few exceptions, totally ignored his work or dismissed it as superficial or vulgar.

The majority of Neiman's paintings focus on sports — some two dozen of them, ranging from basketball, boxing, billiards, and hockey to gymnastics, shot put, swimming, and cycling. Neiman's 1972 Olympics sketches were mounted in 1972 by the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Hundreds of works by Neiman appear in his eleven books, which, in addition to Art and Life Style, are Horses (1979); LeRoy Neiman Posters (1980); Carnaval (1981); Winners (1983), which was published in Japanese in 1985; Monte Carlo Chase (1988); The Prints of LeRoy Neiman 1980-1990 (1991); Big Time Golf (1992); LeRoy Neiman, An American in Paris (1994); LeRoy Neiman On Safari (1997), and The Prints of LeRoy Neiman 1990-2000 (2000). Each year for the past quarter-century, he has created at least eight limited-edition serigraphs (silkscreen prints). Distributed by Knoedler Publishing, they are sold in selected galleries throughout the United States.

A member of the New York City Advisory Commission for Cultural Affairs since 1995, Neiman has received four honorary degrees and, among other honors, an Award of Merit from the American Athletic Union (1976), a Gold Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement (1977), and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Muscular Dystrophy Association (1986). Through the years, he has donated scores of his artworks to charitable organizations, and in 1995 he gave the School of the Arts at Columbia University, in New York City, a gift of $6 million to create the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies.