Alfred Leslie: Abstraction 1951 - 1962

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ALFRED LESLIEabstraction 1951–1962

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ALLANSTONEP R O J E C T S

ALFRED LESLIEabstraction 1951–1962

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Produced on the occasion of:

ALFRED LESLIE, Abstraction 1951- 1962

October 29 – December 24, 2015

Allan Stone Projects

535 West 22nd Street, 3rd Floor

New York, NY 10011

Tel: 212-987-4997

Fax: 917-421-9895

[email protected]

www.allanstoneprojects.com

President: Dorothy Goldeen

Director: Bo Joseph

Cover (Detail):

The Black Line, 1960-61

Oil on canvas

78 1/4 x 80 1/4 in., 198.8 x 203.8 cm

Back cover (Detail):

Gildo the Moor (Rose), 1951

Mixed media oil and collage on board

9 1⁄8 x 12 1⁄8 in., 23.2 x 30.8 cm

Signed and dated viewer’s upper left

Catalog © 2015 Allan Stone Projects

All works © 2015 Alfred Leslie

All Rights Reserved

Design: Ernesto Aparicio

Photography: Joe Protheroe

All rights reserved under international and

Pan-American copyright conventions. No part

of this digital catalog may be reproduced or

utilized in any form or by any means, electronic

or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage or

retrieval system without permission in writing

from Allan Stone Projects.

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PREFACE

1 Stone, Allan. “Painter of the Loaded Brush,” Alfred Leslie, 1951 - 1962: Expressing the Zeitgeist. New York: Allan Stone Gallery, 2004. p. 3

2 Ibid., p. 4

Alfred Leslie: Abstraction 1951–1962 features paintings and works on paper by one of the

seminal artists of the New York art world in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Early in his career, Leslie

was a Abstract Expressionist who experimented ambitiously with collage, grid compositions,

and gestural and geometric abstraction. The incorporation of chance and control, of hard

and soft, of active and passive modes, express the artist’s singular reaction to the explosive

aftermath of abstract art in Postwar America.

Following major breakthroughs led by Pollock, de Kooning, Kline, and others, Leslie explored

Abstract Expressionist and proto-Pop styles. His technique portrays a balance between vigorous

expression and hard-edged control, featuring loaded brush strokes against architectural compo-

sitions as in The Black Line, 1960–61 (p.25). He played with form in the collage Gildo the Moor

(Rose), 1951, (p.9) where ripped black paper is haphazardly stapled together, its exposed edges

creating layers of line and space. The provocative titles to his works often refer to galvanizing

moments politically, socially or culturally. For example, Gildo the Moor (Rose) refers to a Roman

warrior who led the rebellion against the Emperor Honorius in 398 a.d. Arrivato Zampano, 1959,

(p.21) is named after the brutish protagonist in Federico Fellini’s film, La Strada, 1954.

Leslie’s wide-ranging artistic activities, including filmmaking and writing, served as the

context for many of his artworks that came out of this fervent period. Allan Stone stated in his

essay on the artist that these works “epitomize the power and dynamic of postwar American

abstract painting.”1 Leslie’s visceral approach to art making is best described as “embodying the

zeitgeist of the time.”2

Alfred Leslie was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1927. After serving in the U. S. Coast Guard,

he studied at New York University under the G. I. Bill, and later at Pratt Institute and the Art

Students League. His work was selected by Clement Greenberg for the New Talent exhibition at

the Kootz Gallery in 1949, and a screening of his film Directions: A Walk After the War Games

took place at the Museum of Modern Art. In the 1950’s, Leslie was included in the historic

Ninth Street Show, curated by Leo Castelli, had five solo shows at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, and

was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s Sixteen Americans exhibition, all the while

receiving great praise for his more geometric variety of Abstract Expressionism. In 1962, Leslie

fully turned to large-scale figuration often in grisaille. His work is in collections of the Museum

of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Art

Institute of Chicago among others. He lives and works in New York City.

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in 1952, harold rosenberg wrote his influential essay

on action painting to describe what his friends Pollock, de Kooning,

and Kline were doing. The canvas was the arena in which the artist

acted, and the act of painting was more important than the painting

itself. The act of painting was emotional, impulsive, unplanned,

spontaneous, and unrehearsed.

However, it has by now become clear that this theory of action

painting never could apply to painters like de Kooning, Kline and

Pollock because these painters were highly calculating when it came to

applying paint to canvas. De Kooning would try any number of paint

passages on a stack of vellum and once having chosen one treatment,

he would carefully transcribe that passage onto the canvas in order

to achieve the effect of spontaneity. This is not action painting. It

just looks like action painting, but it is planned, highly calculated and

definitely not spontaneous.

Kline as well took great pains to create the look of spontaneity,

and used very conservative techniques like graphing his larger canvas

to reproduce exactly a smaller sketch, or using a projector to enlarge

a smaller image and tracing the outlines of the strokes in pencil, and

then carefully painting over the pencil lines so none would show.

Pollock in his drip paintings carefully wove the matrix of his line

—the technique was tightly controlled although no brush was used.

The artists who seemed to take Rosenberg’s theory of “action

painting” to heart were Alfred Leslie, Norman Bluhm and Michael

Goldberg. The work of all three abstract expressionists depended

heavily on a loaded brush and energetic execution.

This exhibition is devoted to the work of Alfred Leslie from 1951

to 1962. Leslie’s energy has always fascinated me. I remember the

first moment I saw one of his paintings at the Martha Jackson Gallery

in the early 1960s. The canvas was divided into quadrants and each

quadrant was delineated by broad exuberant brush strokes with much

splattering. Indeed the work seemed to celebrate the splattering

which counterpointed the somewhat geometric division of the canvas,

thereby establishing a classical dialogue in the work. The net result

of these controlled splatter paintings is a sense of balance between

exuberant freedom and restraint.

Alfred Leslie’s work has an indisputable signature: the architecture,

the wielding of the loaded brush, and the consistently present double

vertical bands. Whether it is a large oil on canvas or a miniature

collage, Leslie’s work is immediately identifiable. Leslie has the ability

to impart scale much like Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline. His

small works have great scale and his large works an even grander sense

of scale. This combined with Leslie’s color sense created a powerful

body of work that epitomizes the power and dynamic of postwar

American abstract painting.

While I always found Leslie’s artwork compelling, I knew little else

about his other interests. I was a young art dealer caught up in the

excitement of the emerging art of the time. The cultural, political, and

social environment was embroiled in the enthusiasm and optimism of

change. As I reflect on the times and Alfred Leslie’s life, I am amazed

to find how many pulses Leslie had his finger on.

Alfred Leslie through his filmmaking, which started in the late

1940s, was part of the incipient American underground independent

film movement. His 1959 work, Pull My Daisy, made in collaboration

with Robert Frank is considered the first independent film accepted

into the National Film Archives. Leslie’s studio was a cultural

center, always open and filled with art happenings and events. His

literary involvements were broad, from his own writing to the 1959

publication of The Hasty Papers, a compendium of literary, political and

artistic thinking. Leslie collaborated with the writers who are today’s

literary giants: Sartre, O’Hara, Ginsberg, and Kerouac. De Kooning

described The Hasty Papers best when he called it “a snapshot of us all.”

Leslie took the unusual path from abstraction to realism, so many

may not know of his early abstract work. In the time period that this

exhibition examines, 1951-62, Alfred Leslie may have been not so

much in touch with as actually embodying the Zeitgeist of the time.

Originally published in Alfred Leslie: Expressing the Zeitgeist, 2004

PAINTER OF THE LOADED BRUSHAllan Stone

Untitled, (DETAIL), 1959


mounted to wood

10 1⁄8 x 15 3⁄4 in., 26 x 40 cm

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Gildo the Moor (Rose), 1951


9 1⁄8 x 12 1⁄8 in., 23 x 30 cm

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Untitled, 1953


10 3⁄8 x 8 1⁄8 in., 26 x 20 cm

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Untitled, 1953

Mixed media and collage on paper

mountedon board

15 1⁄2 x 12 1⁄4 in., 39 x 31 cm

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Untitled, 1954

Mixed media oil and collage on linen

mounted to board

7 7⁄8 x 8 3⁄8 in., 20 x 21 cm

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Four Panel Green—Big Green, 1956-57

Oil on canvas

144 x 166 in., 366 x 422 cm

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Untitled, 1957

Mixed media oil and collage on paper

17 1⁄2 x 14 1⁄2 in., 45 x 37 cm

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Narses, 1959


18 x 20 in., 46 x 51 cm

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Oval Collage, 1959

Mixed media crayon, gouache and

collage on paper

20 x 17 3⁄4 in., 51 x 45 cm

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Arrivato Zampano, 1959

Oil on canvas

76 1⁄4 x 80 in., 194 x 203 cm

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Untitled, 1959

Mixed media, oil and collage on board

18 x 20 3⁄4 in., 46 x 53 cm

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The Black Line, 1960-61

Oil on canvas

78 1⁄4 x 80 1⁄4 in., 199 x 204 cm

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OPPOSITE PAGE

Untitled, 1960


25 x 19 in., 64 x 49 cm

Untitled, 1959


mounted to wood

10 1⁄8 x 15 3⁄4 in., 26 x 40 cm

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Cough Control, 1961-62

Oil on canvas

96 1⁄4 x 72 1⁄4 in., 245 x 184 cm

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October 29, 1927

Alfred Leslie born in New York City.

1945–49

After serving in the United States Coast Guard from

1945-46, Leslie studies at the Art Students League in

1947, and from 1947-49 with Tony Smith and William

Baziotes at New York University.

In 1949, the critic Clement Greenberg chooses Leslie’s

work for the New Talent exhibition at the Kootz Gallery

in New York City. Concurrent with the exhibition,

Leslie releases his third film, Directions: A Walk After The

War Games (he started directing in 1945). It is shown at

a special screening at The Museum of Modern Art.

1951-59

In 1951 Leslie is part of the legendary 9th Street Show at the

9th Street Gallery in New York.

Leslie has his first solo show in 1952 at the Tibor de Nagy

Gallery in New York City. Other solo shows at de Nagy

follow in 1953, 1954 and 1957. The Robert Keene Gallery

in Southampton, New York, shows Leslie’s work in

one-man exhibitions in 1957 and 1958.

Leslie’s work is also included in various American

museum exhibitions: Recent Work by Young Americans,

organized by The Museum of Modern Art in 1954,

Artists of the New York School: Second Generation at The

Jewish Museum in 1957, the Annual Exhibition at the

Whitney Museum of American Art in 1957, the Pittsburgh

International at the Museum of Art at the Carnegie

Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1958 and again at

both The Jewish Museum in New York in 1958 and the

Whitney Museum’s Annual Exhibition in 1959.

In 1957 Leslie’s work is part of a traveling exhibition

organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York for

the Metropolitan Art Museum in Tokyo, called Fourth

International Art Exhibition: Japan. In 1958, Leslie is part

of another exhibition in Japan, The International Art

of a New Era, U.S.A., Japan, Europe, which opens at the

Takashimaya department store in Osaka. The same year

two other international group exhibitions feature Leslie’s

work: Young Americans at Musée d’Art Moderne de la

Ville de Paris in France, and Fifteen American Artists in

Spoleto, Italy.

Leslie also works with writing, music and set design.

Towards the end of the 1950s, Leslie writes The Chekhov

Cha-Cha, a literary work that Leslie states, “can be seen

as a poem, a novel, or a play, a multi-purpose work.” In

1959, while working on his literary magazine The Hasty

Papers, Leslie shows new work in The Museum of Modern

Art exhibition 16 Americans and the Whitney Museum

of American Art exhibition Project I: Longview Foundation

Purchases in Modern American Painting and Sculpture and

completes his movie Pull My Daisy.

Pull My Daisy—co-directed with Robert Frank, recited

by Jack Kerouac from his play The Beat Generation and

featuring Allen Ginsberg—becomes a landmark in what is

then the incipient American underground film movement.

It will later be selected for preservation in the National

Film Registry and inducted in 1996.

1960-65

In 1960, Leslie publishes The Hasty Papers, an edgy,

anarchic commentary. Received with enthusiasm by

the artistic and literary communities, The Hasty Papers

features works by artists, poets, critics and politicians.

Although the Establishment at the time dismisses the

review, many of the contributors—among them, Jean-Paul

Sartre, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac—

will come to be considered twentieth-century masters.

The same year, Leslie also exhibits his work alongside

John Chamberlain at the Martha Jackson Gallery; and

participates in Sixty American Painters, 1960: Abstract

Expressionist Painting of the ‘50s at the Art Center in

Minneapolis, Minnesota, in V Bienal in São Paulo, Brazil,

and in a group exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim

Museum in New York.

In 1961, he has solo shows at the Martha Jackson Gallery

and at the David Anderson Gallery in New York, and

his work is included in the exhibition American Abstract

ALFRED LESLIEselected chronology

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Expressionists and Imagists at the Solomon R. Guggenheim

Museum in New York.

In 1962, Leslie is featured in the exhibition 4 Amerikanare:

Jasper Johns, Alfred Leslie, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard

Stankiewicz at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm,

Sweden. He has a solo exhibition at Holland Goldowsky

Gallery in Chicago, Illinois.

After working more than 15 years as an abstract painter,

in 1962 Leslie begins to change toward realism, resulting

in his multi-horizoned, large Grisaille portraits. Leslie

becomes known as an artist who does not follow trends,

but rather as somebody who sets them. His move to

figurative painting is greeted with everything from

excitement to resentment.

Leslie releases the movie The Last Clean Shirt, a collab-

oration with Frank O’Hara, in 1964. The movie is screened

at the Lincoln Center Film Festival in New York, and

wins an award for Best Experimental Film the same year

at the Film Festival in Bergamo, Italy.

In the same year, his abstract and his realist works are

featured in different museum exhibitions. His abstract

work is featured in the 1965 exhibition American Collages

at The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the

Whitney Museum of American Art Annual Exhibition

includes his Grisaille paintings in 1965 and 1967.

1966–69

In 1966, Leslie’s studio burns down—destroying all his

paintings as well as his film masters—just as the Whitney

Museum is about to give him a one-man show featuring

the Grisaille paintings and just as one of his films is being

considered for the New York Film Festival. A few months

earlier, Frank O’Hara, one of Leslie’s good friends, is killed

in an accident.

In 1967, Leslie starts work on what he later titles The

Killing Cycle, a collection of five major canvases and

nearly a hundred studies depicting the death of Frank

O’Hara. (He will complete The Killing Cycle in 1981, and

in 1991 the works will be featured in the exhibition

Alfred Leslie: The Killing Cycle at the Saint Louis Art

Museum in Missouri).

In 1968, Leslie receives a grant from the National

Endowment for the Arts. He participates in In Memory of

My Feelings: Frank O’Hara at The Museum of Modern Art

in New York.

In 1969 he receives the Guggenheim Fellowship, and has a

solo exhibition at the Goldowsky Gallery in New York.

1970s

In 1970, Leslie’s work is included in 22 Realists at the

Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

In 1971, Leslie receives the Academy Award in Art from

the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work

is featured in Younger Abstract Expressionists of the 50’s

at The Museum of Modern Art in New York and in

Leslie, Thiebaud, Pearlstein at the Hayden Gallery at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge,

Massachusetts. He also has a solo exhibition at the

Goldowsky Gallery in New York.

In 1973, his work is included in the Whitney Museum of

American Art’s Biennial Exhibition.

In 1976, a solo traveling exhibition that originates at

the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is

included in the XXXVII Biennale di Venezia in Italy. Leslie’s

work is exhibited in 30 Years of American Printmaking

at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York. In 1976

and 1977, he has a solo exhibition at the Museum of

Contemporary Art in Chicago, Illinois (catalogue essay by

Robert Rosenblum).

In 1977, Leslie’s work is included in Nothing But Nudes

at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York,

in Drawings of the 70’s at The Museum of Modern Art in

New York and in A View of the Decade at the Museum of

Contemporary Art in Chicago, Illinois.

1980s

Leslie’s work is included in the 1980 exhibitions The

Fifties: Aspects of Painting in New York at the Hirshhorn

Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.,

American Portrait Drawings at the National Portrait Gallery

in Washington, D.C., and in American Drawings

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in Black and White at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in

New York.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York features

his paintings in the 1981 exhibition An American Choice:

The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection. Two

traveling exhibitions in 1983 and 1985 follow: 100 Views

Along the Road: The Watercolors of Alfred Leslie, originating

at the Oil and Steel Gallery in New York, and American

Realism: The Precise Image, originating at the Isetan

Museum of Art in Tokyo, Japan.

1990s

His work is featured in the 1991 retrospective exhibition,

The Power of Form: Alfred Leslie’s Art, 1951–1991 at

the Joseloff Gallery at the University of Hartford,

Connecticut. In 1994, Leslie receives the Award of Merit

Medal For Painting for lifetime achievement from the

American Academy of Arts and Letters.

2000s

In 2000, Leslie’s painting is exhibited in Picturing the

Modern Amazon at the New Museum of Contemporary

Art in New York City. His feature-length movie The

Cedar Bar is released in 2002.

In 2004, Leslie received a solo exhibition of his early

work at Allan Stone Gallery accompanied by a catalog

with an essay written by Allan Stone.

Alfred Leslie currently lives in New York City.

Selected Public Collections

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian

Institution, Washington, D.C.

Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, Indiana

Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts

Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution,

Washington, D.C.

Neue Gallery der Stadt Aachen, Aachen, Germany

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania

The Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri

Museum de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The

Netherlands

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Washington Art Consortium, Washington

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York

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ALLANSTONEP R O J E C T S

Alfred Leslie: Abstraction 1951 - 1962

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