STENMARK
Leroy Neiman is probably America’s most popular and commercially successful artist of all time. His serigraphs have allowed many people to purchase limited editions of his paintings.
Neiman was born in 1926 and grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. When World War II erupted, he dropped out of high school and joined the Army where he found himself painting highly suggestive wall murals for the troops in the mess hall. Everybody liked them and Neiman liked doing them. So he decided to become an artist when he returned to his hometown in 1946. He studied art in St. Paul, Paris and then at the Art Institute of Chicago under the G.I. Bill.
Modern artists have been inspired by the conceptual breakthrough of the Post-impressionists, Symbolists, Expressionists and especially the masters of the School of Paris. Color and form are free to serve as symbols of how nature is working inside each artist. Neiman’s colors are so intense that they are “outrageous” to the eyes of people raised on the cool, relatively subtle harmonies of the School of Paris masters.
The art of Neiman is unique and has become controversial because he has broken the barriers of many of the most hallowed assumptions of modern art history and contemporary criticism. This is due mostly to the fact that he had the “Audacity” to merge the semi-sacred contemporary and colorful Abstract painting (“Action Painting”) with traditional figurative painting (“Antiquated”) of people and traditional Social Realism or “Genre” painting - the painting of life’s daily events. Few “important” painters of the 20th Century have engaged in narrative (story-telling) picture painting since Cubism fragmented and then shattered the human figure until nothing was left to relate to except the nonúfigurative elements of an abstract composition. So it has been difficult (psychologically) for some critics to consider figure painters (painters of people) “important” no matter how good they may be. However, studies have shown that only about 1% of the American people are able to appreciate non-figurative painting. One reason why some artists from Picasso to Neiman have insisted on the use of the human figure is so that the general public can understand what they’re doing. One of the tragedies of The Modern Tradition is that so few people have been able to understand and appreciate it. It is unprecedented in the history of art for a society to be so disconnected from the inspiration of the greatest artist of the time. Neiman has helped change that for 20th Century art lovers.
Neiman is best known and most admired as an artist who specializes in sporting events and sports figures. He was the Official Artist of the 1980 Olympic Games.
This is my reproduction of Neiman’s painting of Swedish skiing legend, Ingmar Stenmark, at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York. It was one of Stenmark’s last races.
Oil on Canvas, 1988