Artist of the day: Artist of the day, May 7: LeRoy Neiman, American painter (Impressionist)

Monday, May 7, 2018

Artist of the day, May 7: LeRoy Neiman, American painter (Impressionist)

LeRoy Neiman (born LeRoy Leslie Runquist), (1921 – 2012) was an American Impressionist artist known for his brilliantly colored, paintings and screen prints of athletes, musicians, and sporting events.
Of Turkish and Swedish descent, LeRoy Neiman was born in St. Paul, Minnesota to Charles Runquist, an unskilled laborer, and Lydia (Serline) Runquist. Raised in a rough blue-collar St. Paul neighborhood, early on LeRoy Neiman became a “street kid,” in his words.
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. “If nothing else, the army completely confirmed me as an artist. During this period I made my crucial discovery of the difference between the lifestyles of the officer and the Pfc [private first class]. This was to become the basis of my later mission in art, to investigate life’s social strata from the workingman to the multimillionaire. I discovered that while the poor I knew so well are so often pitiable, the rich can be fools.”

Earlier, while freelancing at a Chicago department store, Neiman had made the acquaintance of Hugh Hefner, who was then a copywriter there. In December 1953 Hefner began publishing Playboy. A few months later, after a chance meeting, Neiman showed Hefner some of his paintings. Much impressed, Hefner brought Art Paul, Playboy’s art director, to Neiman’s apartment to see them. Paul immediately commissioned the artist to illustrate “Black Country,” a short story by Charles Beaumont about a jazz musician. His creation of those illustrations, which earned Playboy an award from the Chicago Art Directors Club in 1954, marks the inception of Neiman’s ongoing association with the magazine.

Neiman traveled the world painting the best in entertainment events, from English steeplechases to the Cannes Film Festival. Neiman also worked at studios in France and Italy. When he returned to the United States, his first solo gallery exhibition was held at New York's Hammer Galleries. He has covered five Olympiads, holds four honorary degrees, and wrote nine books. In 1995, the artist endowed Columbia University with the funds to create the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies.

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