(NEW YORK, NY) -- Since he first showed his work in 1963, Mel Leipzig has been chronicling the quotidian details of ordinary peoples’ lives. A painter ahead of his time, he has focused on matters large and small that characterize their activities and surroundings, including an astute awareness of the way race, ethnicity, and class saturate the human experience. Curated by Margaret M. O’Reilly, "Mel Leipzig: Painter of People" will be on view at Gallery Henoch from March 10 through April 2, 2022.
As a painter rooted in the figurative tradition, Leipzig has been underappreciated by the art world. The brochure contains 25 of the over 650 artworks done over the course of his career. As you will note from this selection, he has spent a career painting women, people of color, working class Americans and others traditionally underrepresented in portraiture, with dignity and respect for their inherent humanity.
Born in Brooklyn in 1935, Leipzig resides in Trenton, NJ. He studied at The Cooper Union with Sidney Delevante, Stefano Cusumano, Nicholas Marsicano, Morris Kantor, Will Barnet and Neil Welliver, Yale University School of Art & Architecture with Josef Albers and James Brooks (BFA 1958) and Pratt Institute with Nan Benedict, Ralph Wickiser and George McNeill (MFA 1972).
Leipzig received a Fulbright Grant to Paris (1958-59), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (1959-60), and four grants for painting from the New Jersey Council on the Arts (1982, 1986, 1992, 2002). In 1996, he was in the last group to receive individual artists grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2006, Mel Leipzig was elected to the National Academy.
He has had over 45 one-person exhibitions, including shows at museums, art centers and university galleries in New York City, New Jersey, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Arkansas. In 1998, he was the subject of a retrospective at the New Jersey State Museum.
Leipzig’s works are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Academy Museum and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York. In New Jersey, his paintings are in the collections of the New Jersey State Museum, Montclair Art Museum, Morris Museum, Noyes Museum of Art, and the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, among others. Other collections include the White House Collection, Woodmere Art Museum and the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and the Springville Museum of Art. His work is also included in numerous private and corporate collections. At nearly 87, Leipzig continues to paint, exploring and expanding his practice.
The exhibit was curated by Margaret M. O’Reilly, Executive Director / Curator of Fine Art for the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, New Jersey.
Gallery Henoch is located at 555 W 25th Street in New York, NY.
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