Leo Valledor
Leo Valledor | |
---|---|
Born | 1936 San Francisco, California |
Died | 1989 (aged 52–53) San Francisco, California |
Alma mater | San Francisco Art Institute |
Years active | 1953–1989 |
Style | hard-edge painting, minimalism |
Leo Valledor (1936–1989)
Early life
Leo Valledor was born and raised in the
From 1953 until 1955, Valledor was a student at the
When he moved to New York City in 1961 he became a member of the influential Park Place Gallery in
In New York at the Kaymar Gallery in March and April 1964 Valledor also exhibited with
In the late 1970s and early 1980s Valledor became the Art Exhibition Director and teacher at Lone Mountain College in San Francisco. He was a guest teacher at the University of California, Berkeley. He created a roof mural for the Department of Public Works approved by the San Francisco Arts Commission. He received his first National Endowment for the Arts Artist Fellowship Grant in 1981, and received another grant in 1982. In the eighties he received a California Arts Council artist-in-residence grant in the South of Market community. He also taught at the San Francisco Art Institute. He lived in the city of San Francisco until his death in 1989.[9] He was survived by his wife Mary Valledor and his son Rio Valledor.[10]
Reflections on his work: critics and historians
Art critics have placed his work in context with the work of Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman, and Leon Polk Smith.[11] Other art historians, like Frances Colpitt, have found his work to be in relation to Frank Stella. Colpitt states, "Less assimilable to Op art experiments of the early 1960s, Valledor's shaped canvases are more reminiscent of Frank Stella's contemporaneous work... But Skeedo (1965) is so quirky and radically shaped that it seems without precedent..."[12] Art critic Knute Stiles reviewed Valledor's shows in San Francisco in the 1976: "He is one of a dozen modernists who subscribe to one or another of the subgroups of what might be called International Style Geometric abstraction. His work has a classical or pure form-oriented bent, but in the early '60s he emerged as a pioneer of the Minimalism which was to dominate that decade."[13] Valledor's work explores the juxtapositions of colors and geometric forms as metaphors for the interplay of elements in the natural world, as Lawrence Rinder explains:
We all know that at one time (especially in San Francisco) jazz, abstract expressionism and what's known as Beat poetry were all part of one culture. It may be a cliche but it was a powerful reality. One thing helped to explain the other: one thought, different languages. I can imagine how great Leo must have felt to show his art at the Six Gallery in 1955... the same year Ginsberg first read his culture-shaking poem Howl. Where Leo's art gets hard for some is right where it ought to get easy. Abandoning the gestural language of abstract expressionism (which would linger in the Bay Area for decades), he started to explore reduced palettes, geometric shapes, and the spatial dimension of color. This wasn't the end of his dive into the jazz-like spirit, it was the beginning. Geometry was his style and color was his tone.[3]
Valledor's work is in the collections of the Achenbach Collection of San Francisco,
References
- ^ "Leo Valledor". SFMOMA. Retrieved 2018-02-07.
- ^ "A hidden legacy of Asian art". SFGate. Retrieved 2018-02-07.
- ^ a b c Rinder, Lawrence "Everything Pellucid: The Paintings of Leo Valledor" Leo Valledor: Selected Works, 2006
- ^ Karlstrom, Paul J. "Valledor and Villa: Separate Artistic Roads to Identity" Asian American Art: Starting from Here Stanford University Press, 2008.
- ^ Karlstrom, Paul J. "Valledor and Villa: Separate Artistic Roads to Identity" Asian American Art: Starting from Here Stanford University Press, 2008
- ^ Humblet, Claudine, La Nouvelle Abstraction Americaine 1950-1970: Troisieme Tome. Neil Williams Estate, 2003 p. 1903
- ^ "Leo Valledor - Artist Biography for Leo Valledor". www.askart.com. Retrieved 2018-02-07.
- ^ a b "Career" Leo Valledor: Selected Works, 2006
- ^ "Career"Leo Valledor: Selected Works, 2006
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-02-07.
- ^ a b c "Togonon Gallery".
- ^ Colpitt, Frances "Affiliations: Space Explorers" p. 64 Art in America, February 2009
- ^ Stiles, Knute Art in America November, December, 1976 "Between Sound & Space: The Paintings of Leo Valledor from 1959-1989" Leo Valledor exhibition October 4-November 8, 2008 at the Togonon Gallery