The Artist and His Legacy

Best known for his brilliantly colored, stunningly energetic images of sporting events and leisure activities, LeRoy Neiman is one of the most popular living artists in the United States.

In 2007, Neiman was commissioned by Cobalt Art Group LLC. to create the Official Artwork for the 37th Ryder Cup matches to be held at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky in September of 2008.

"LeRoy Neiman-Five Decades", a year long retrospective exhibit including paintings, prints, drawings, books and posters from the Artist's personal archives and collection will be on view at Cobalt Artworks gallery in Louisville starting in September of 2007.

LeRoy Neiman's art and style are loved by millions of people throughout America and around the world. His art is unique. It stands alone, without any real comparison. Neiman's art has broken the barriers of many of the most hallowed assumptions of modern art history and contemporary criticism.

A teacher at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for 10 years early in his career, after studying there, Neiman first gained wide recognition for his work with Hugh Hefner as a contributing artist for Playboy in the 1950s.

Many of his images of what he calls " the good life," have appeared in the form of etchings, lithographs, silkscreen prints, and sculptures as well as paintings, in the permanent collections of public and private museums and other institutions worldwide.

Neiman has been the official artist at five Olympiads and four Superbowls. Millions of people have watched him at work on TV coverage of the Olympics, as Official Superbowl computer artist, and at other major competitions, televised on location with his sketchbook and drawing materials, producing split-second records and highly developed images of what he is witnessing.

"Before the camera, such reportage of history and the passing scene was one of the most important functions of painters and draftsmen of all sorts. Mr. Neiman has revived an almost lost and time-honored art form," Carl J. Weinhardt observed in the catalog for the exhibition of Neiman's 1972 Olympics sketches, which was mounted that year by the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Art critic Nick Seitz wrote that Neiman, who has been labeled an American Impressionist, "has the journalistic talent, as well as the artistic ability, to convey the essence of a game or contestant with great impact."

"I guess I created LeRoy Neiman," the artist once said. "Nobody else told me how to do it." Neiman has cited as especially influential in his development as an artist the work of the artists Leonardo da Vinci and Rubens, "for spirit"; Tintoretto, "for space"; and Fragonard, "for feel."

Other major influences include the French master of light and color Raoul Dufy, the Eastern European Expressionists Kees van Dongen and Oskar Kokoschka, George Bellows and other members of the Ashcan School of art, and the American Abstract Expressionists, especially Jackson Pollock and other practitioners of action painting, in which paint is applied directly by such means as splattering and dribbling.

A member of the New York City Advisory Commission for Cultural Affairs since 1995, Neiman has received four honorary degrees and, among other honors, an Award of Merit from the American Athletic Union (1976), a Gold Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement (1977), and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Muscular Dystrophy Association (1986).

Through the years he has donated scores of his artworks to charitable organizations, and in 1995 he gave the School of the Arts at Columbia University, in New York City, a gift of $6 million to create the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies.

By his own account, LeRoy Neiman works very hard, has no hobbies, and does not take vacations. He paints in a double-height studio in the Hotel des Artistes, a landmark New York City building across the street from one of his favorite subjects--Central Park.

In the same building he maintains an office; a penthouse pied-a-terre; and an apartment that he shares with his best friend--his wife, the former Janet Byrne, with whom he just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.

His archives, which he is currently assembling for preservation at the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C., are also kept there. His signature black handlebar mustache and luxuriant slicked-back hair are now peppered with gray, and he is seldom photographed without his trademark prop, a long cigar.

Described by Malcolm Lein as quiet and warm, for many years he cultivated a reputation as a flamboyant man-about-town. "I like being outrageous. . . ," he acknowledged to Pete Dexter for Esquire (July 1984). "I don't actually do anything, except be conspicuous. It keeps me revved up." In the New Yorker (February 5, 1979), he was quoted as saying, "My performance is part of my success."