Leon Kelly Art
American, 1901-1982
Leon Kelly, born in 1901, studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Awarded a traveling scholarship from that institution in 1924, he studied in Paris, France at the Grande Chaumiere. Other teachers included Arthur B. Carles, Jean Auguste Adolphe, Earl Horter and Alexandre Portinoff.
Essentially a Surrealist painter, Kelly did wide-ranging work that went from painterly to meticulous Surrealism, Cezanne-inspired watercolors, and Cubist painting. In the 1940s, Julian Levy, the Surrealist dealer, handled Kelly's work in New York City.
Kelly also exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art Annuals (1933-34, 1939-46, 1966); Corcoran Gallery Biennials, Washington, D.C. (three times from 1935-47); Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; had a 1965 retrospective exhibition at the International Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland; Long Beach, New Jersey (1968); Richard Feigen Gallery, Chicago, Illinois (1968, 1970); Newark Museum, New Jersey (1969); and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Kelly's paintings are in the collections of three New York city museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; and Museum of Modern Art; as well as Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California; Sara Roby Foundation Collection at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts; Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska; Newark Museum, New Jersey; and the Tel Aviv Museum, Israel.(Biography provided by Peyton Wright Gallery)
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Artist: Leon Kelly
Untitled Female Nude with Male, Original Drawing by Surrealist Painter
By Leon Kelly
Located in Doylestown, PA
"Untitled Female Nude and Male" is a 22 x 17 inches, ink on paper drawing by American Surrealist painter Leon Kelly. The drawing is signed and dated in the lower right, it is matted ...
Category
1960s Surrealist Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Archival Ink, Archival Paper
Woman at Basin, Picasso Style Portrait of a Female Nude, American Modernist
By Leon Kelly
Located in Doylestown, PA
"Woman by Basin" by Philadelphia born modernist and surrealist painter Leon Kelly, is a framed and matted portrait of a female nude.
The 22.5" x 17.75" mixed media on artist board i...
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1920s American Modern Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Mixed Media
Landscape with Trees
By Leon Kelly
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Landscape with Trees
Watercolor on paper, 1929
Signed in pencil lower right corner
Obviously influenced by the Cezanne works in the collection of his patron Alfred C. Barnes of Phila...
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1920s American Modern Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Watercolor
Untitled
By Leon Kelly
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Untitled
Graphite on paper, 1930
Signed and dated upper right (see photo)
Exhibited: Francis Nauman, Leon Kelly: Draftsman Extraordinaire, New York, April 4 - May 23, 2014. (label)
C...
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1920s Abstract Expressionist Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Pencil
Untitled
By Leon Kelly
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Untitled
Pastel on paper, 1922
Initialed lower right (see photo)
Exhibited: Francis Nauman, Leon Kelly: Draftsman Extraordinaire, New York, April 4 - May 23, 2014.
Condition: Excell...
Category
20th Century American Modern Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Pastel
Surrealist Portrait Drawing by Philadelphia Artist Leon Kelly
By Leon Kelly
Located in Philadelphia, PA
Leon Kelly
(American, born France, 1901-1982)
Surrealist Portrait
Ink on paper, 11 3/4 x 8 3/4 inches; Framed: 21 3/4 x 18 3/4 inches
Signed and dated at lower right: "Leon Kelly 19...
Category
1950s Surrealist Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Paper, Ink
Tabletop Still Life, Modernist Still Life with Food, Flowers, and Wine, Signed
By Leon Kelly
Located in Doylestown, PA
"Tabletop Still Life" by Philadelphia born modernist and surrealist painter Leon Kelly, is a framed painting of a set dinner table with food, flowers, and wine. The 36" x 44" oil on ...
Category
1930s American Modern Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Oil, Board
Untitled
By Leon Kelly
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Untitled
Pastel on paper, 1922
Initialed lower right (see photo)
Exhibited: Francis Nauman, Leon Kelly: Draftsman Extraordinaire, New York, April 4 - May 23, 2014.
Condition: excellent
Image size: 11 8 7/8 inches
Frame size: 18 1/4 x 16 1/4 inches
Provenance: Estate of the artist
The Orange Chicken...
Category
1920s Abstract Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Pastel
Untitled
By Leon Kelly
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Untitled
Pastel on paper, 1922
Initialed and dated lower right (see photo)
Exhibited: Francis Nauman, Leon Kelly: Draftsman Extraordinaire, New York, April 4 - May 23, 2014.
Provenance: Estate of the Artist
The Orange Chicken...
Category
1920s Abstract Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Pastel
Untitled
By Leon Kelly
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Untitled
Pastel on paper, 1922
Signed with the artist's initials in pencil
Provenance: Estate of the artist
Francis M. Nauman (label)
Private collection, NY
A very early abstract/cubist work by Kelly. Created while the artist was studying with Arthur Carles in Philadelphia.
Leon Kelly (October 21, 1901 – June 28, 1982) was an American artist born in Philadelphia, PA. He is most well known for his contributions to American Surrealism, but his work also encompassed styles such as Cubism, Social Realism, and Abstraction. Reclusive by nature, a character trait that became more exaggerated in the 1940s and later, Kelly's work reflects his determination not to be limited by the trends of his time. His large output of paintings is complemented by a prolific number of drawings that span his career of 50 years. Some of the collections where his work is represented are: The Metropolitan Museum in New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Boston Public Library.
Biography
Kelly was born in 1901 at home at 1533 Newkirk Street, Philadelphia, PA. He was the only child of Elizabeth (née Stevenson) and Pantaleon L. Kelly. The family resided in Philadelphia where Pantaleon and two of his cousins owned Kelly Brothers, a successful tailoring business. The prosperity of the firm enabled his father to purchase a 144-acre farm in Bucks County PA in 1902, which he named "Rural Retreat" It was here that Pantaleon took Leon to spend every weekend away from the pressures of business and from the disappointments in his failing marriage. Idyllic and peaceful memories of the farm stayed with Leon and embued his work with a love of nature that emerged later in the Lunar Series, in Return and Departure, and in the insect imagery of his Surrealist work. "If anything," he once said,"I am a Pantheist and see a spirit in everything, the grass, the rocks, everything."
At thirteen, Leon left school and began private painting lessons with Albert Jean Adolphe, a teacher at the School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) in Philadelphia. He learned technique by copying the works of the old masters and visiting the Philadelphia Zoo, where he would draw animals. Drawings done in 1916 and 1917 of elephants, snakes and antelope, as well as copies of old master paintings by Holbein and Michelangelo, heralded an impressive emerging talent. In 1917, he studied sculpture with Alexander Portnoff but his studies came to an abrupt halt with the start of World War I. Being too young to enlist, he joined the Quartermaster Corp at the Army Depot in Philadelphia, where he served for more than a year loading ships with supplies and, along with other artists, working on drawings for camouflage.
By 1920, the family's fortunes drastically changed. His father's business had failed due to the introduction of ready made clothing and his marriage, unhappy from the beginning, dissolved. Broken by circumstance Pantaleon left Philadelphia to begin a wandering existence looking for work leaving Leon to support his mother and grandmother. He found a job in 1920 at the Freihofer Baking Company where he worked nights for the next four years. Under these circumstances Leon continued to develop his skills in drawing and painting and learned of the revolutionary developments in art that were taking place in Paris.
During the day he was granted permission to study anatomy at the Philadelphia School of Osteopathy where he dissected a cadaver and perfected his knowledge of the human figure. He also met and studied etching with Earl Horter, a well known illustrator, who had amassed a significant collection of modern art which included work by Brancusi, Matisse, and Cubist works by Picasso and Braque. Among the artists around Horter was Arthur Carles, a charismatic and controversial painter who taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Leon enrolled in the Academy in 1922, becoming what Carles described as, "his best student".
In the next three years Leon work ranged from academic studies of plaster casts, to pointillism, to landscapes of Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, as well as a series of pastels showing influences from Matisse to Picasso. Clearly influenced by Earl Horter's collection and Arthur Carles he mastered analytical cubism in works such as The Three Pears, 1923 and 1925 experimented with Purism in Moon Behind the Italian House. In 1925 Kelly was awarded a Cresson Scholarship and on June 14 he left for Europe.
Paris
The first trip to Europe lasted for approximately three and a half months and introduced Kelly to a culture and place where he felt he belonged. Though he returned to the Academy in the Fall, he left for Europe again a few months later to begin a four-year stay in Paris. He moved into an apartment at 19 rue Daguerre in Paris and began an existence intellectually rich but in creature comforts, very poor. "I kept a cinderblock over the drain in the kitchen sink to keep the rats out of the apartment" he once explained. He frequented the cafes making acquaintances with Henry Miller, James Joyce and the critic Félix Fénéon as well as others. His days were split between copying old master paintings in the Louvre and pursuing modernist ideas that were swirling through the work of all the artists around him. The Lake, 1926 and Interior of the Studio, 1927, now in the Newark Museum.
Patrons during this time were the police official Leon Zamaran, a collector of Courbets, Lautrecs and others, who began collecting Kelly's work. Another was Alfred Barnes of the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia.
In 1929 Kelly married a young French woman, Henriette D'Erfurth. She appears frequently in paintings and drawings done between 1928 and the early 1930s.
Philadelphia
The stock market crash of 1929 made it impossible to continue living in Paris and Kelly and Henriette returned to Philadelphia in 1930. He rented a studio on Thompson Street and began working and participating in shows in the city's galleries. Work from 1930 to 1940 showed continuing influences and experimentation with the themes and techniques acquired in Paris as well as a brief foray into Social Realism. The Little Gallery of Contemporary Art purchased the Absinthe Drinker...
Category
1920s Abstract Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Pastel
Venus Retrieved from the Hands of Death, Surrealist, Nudes, 1959, Oil on Canvas
By Leon Kelly
Located in Doylestown, PA
"Venus Retrieved from the Hands of Death" by Philadelphia born modernist painter Leon Kelly, is a fantasy nude group scene of one female and two male figures. The 49" x 36" oil on ca...
Category
1950s Surrealist Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Secundo Congreso Feminino, Large Canvas Surrealist Female Group Portrait, 1969
By Leon Kelly
Located in Doylestown, PA
"Secundo Congreso Feminino " by Philadelphia born modernist painter Leon Kelly, is a large scale, surrealist painting of a group gathering showing women in the nude. The 60" x 42" oi...
Category
1960s Surrealist Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Lunar Encounter with Child, Surrealist Portrait, Oil on Canvas, 1958, Framed
By Leon Kelly
Located in Doylestown, PA
"Lunar Encounter with Child" by Philadelphia born modernist painter Leon Kelly, is a large, brightly colored surrealist portrait of two figures. The 40" x 30" oil on canvas was paint...
Category
1950s Surrealist Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Untitled
By Leon Kelly
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Untitled Cubist Abstraction
Signed and dated lower right
Watercolor, charcoal and gouache on paper, 1922
Provenance: Estate of the Artist
Schroeder, Romero & Sh...
Category
1920s Cubist Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Charcoal, Watercolor, Gouache
Landscape with buildings and trees
By Leon Kelly
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Landscape with buildings and trees
Watercolor on paper, c. 1930's
Signed in pencil lower right (see photo)
Provenance: Estate of the artist
Condition: Excellent
Sheet size: 9 3/8 x 1...
Category
1930s American Modern Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Watercolor
Two Studies of Henriette (Head of the artist's wife & The Artist's wife writing
By Leon Kelly
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Two Studies of Henriette (Left: Head of the artist's wife, Right: The Artist's wife writing a letter)
Watercolor and graphite on paper, 1928-1930
Signed in pencil lower right (see photo)
Image/sheet size: 9 3/8 x 11 inches
Condition: Excellent
Colors fresh and unfaded
Provenance: Estate of the artist
The Orange Chicken...
Category
1920s American Modern Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Watercolor
Bathers, Modernist Nudes, Oil on Canvas, Signed and Titled
By Leon Kelly
Located in Doylestown, PA
"Bathers" by Philadelphia born modernist painter Leon Kelly, is a fantasy nude scene of two female figures, one with towel in hand, one only depicted as a portrait within the paintin...
Category
20th Century American Modern Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Oil, Canvas
White Pidgeon, La Paloma Blanca, Modernist Abstract, 1962, Framed Oil on Canvas
By Leon Kelly
Located in Doylestown, PA
"White Pidgeon - La Paloma Blanca" by Philadelphia born modernist and surrealist painter Leon Kelly, is a large scale Modernist Abstract painting. The 40" x ...
Category
1960s Abstract Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Self Portrait, Oil on Board, Signed and Dated, 1925, American Modernist
By Leon Kelly
Located in Doylestown, PA
"Self Portrait" by Philadelphia born modernist painter Leon Kelly, is a moody and atmospheric self portrait of the artist in younger years at age 24. The 18" x 16" oil on board, fram...
Category
1920s American Modern Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Oil, Board
Green Landscape, Watercolor and Ink on Paper, circa 1926
By Leon Kelly
Located in Doylestown, PA
"Green Landscape" by Philadelphia born modernist and surrealist painter Leon Kelly, is a framed and matted landscape painting. The 17.5" x 23.5" watercolor and ink on paper is signed...
Category
1920s American Modern Leon Kelly Art
Materials
Archival Ink, Watercolor, Archival Paper
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Leon Kelly is admired as one of America’s most talented surrealist painters. He exhibited alongside Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Arshile Gorky, Roberto Matta, and Eugene Berman at the premier gallery for Surrealism in America, the Julien Levy Gallery. However, it is widely acknowledged that along the path to a deep understanding of Surrealism, Kelly mastered many artistic styles. He skillfully moved from a modernist approach to Impressionism, through Pointillism, Purism, Fauvism, Geometric Abstraction, Analytical Cubism, and in the 1960’s, a bold, more robust Baroque style of painting and drawing.
Kelly’s talent was clear from childhood, particularly his ability to draw. At 13, he took private painting lessons from Albert Jean Adolphe at the School of Industrial Art, now the University of the Arts, in Philadelphia. He enhanced his artistic education by copying Old Master paintings and drawing animals at the Philadelphia Zoo. Several years later, Kelly briefly studied sculpture with Alexander Portnoff before joining the Quartermaster Corp at the Army Depot at the outbreak of World War II.
Kelly’s family’s financial situation changed in 1920 when his father’s tailoring business failed and his parents divorced. The young Kelly was now forced to support his mother and grandmother and over the next four years, he worked evenings at a bakery. With his days free, Kelly studied anatomy at the Philadelphia School of Osteopathy and mastered an understanding of the human body by dissecting a cadaver. Around this time, he met the artist Earl Horter with whom he studied etching. Horter had an important collection of European modern art which exposed Kelly to artists such as Brancusi, Matisse, Picasso and Braque, among others, and opened his mind to the new artistic movements in Paris. Kelly enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1922 where he flourished under the guidance of Arthur B. Carles. Kelly’s artistic talents were apparent and according to the artist’s family, Carles declared him to be his best student.
In 1925, Kelly traveled in Europe for four months on a Cresson Fellowship. After his return to Philadelphia, he enrolled again at the Academy. Soon thereafter, Kelly moved to Paris where he lived for the next six years. While living in his apartment at 19 rue Daguerre he painted The Musician, a work that reflects Kelly’s engagement with Analytic Cubism as practiced by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris.
Although his finances during this period were bleak, Kelly’s intellectual and cultural life were rich. He met Henry Miller, James Joyce and the well-known anarchist and art critic Felix Feneon. At this time, museums and important collectors began purchasing his works and he received the patronage of Albert Barnes. While exploring the current modern styles, Kelly continued his practice of copying old master paintings at the Louvre.
During this period, Kelly’s paintings were included in numerous exhibitions, both group and solo, primarily to favorable reviews. In October 1934, several of his works were among those included in the Second Regional Exhibition of Painting and Prints by Philadelphia Artists at the Whitney Museum in New York. At this time, Kelly created studies for a mural, now lost, in the School Administration Building under the Philadelphia Public Works of Art Project.
In 1940, Julien Levy recognized Kelly’s talent immediately and included Kelly’s work in his gallery located on 57th St. in New York. The first exhibition in 1941 was held at the Art Alliance in Philadelphia and was followed the next year with a solo show in New York. Kelly’s second solo exhibition at Julien Levy Gallery was held in 1944. In a letter to Kelly, Tanguy reported that when Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art, saw the exhibition, Barr declared that Kelly was one of the best American draftsmen.
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Leon Kelly art for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic Leon Kelly art available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Leon Kelly in paint, oil paint, canvas and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the modern style. Not every interior allows for large Leon Kelly art, so small editions measuring 9 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Abraham Walkowitz, Frank Wilcox, and Byron Browne. Leon Kelly art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $1,400 and tops out at $35,750, while the average work can sell for $4,000.