Biography of leroy neiman

Education and Career

1946-50 The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1950-60 Member of Faculty, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Selected Solo Shows

1971 Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela

1981 Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (with Andy Warhol)

1988 The New State Tretyakov Museum, Moscow, Russia

1995 Kentucky Derby Museum, 30-Year Retrospective, Louisville, KY

Prizes, Honors and Awards

1961 Gold Medal,  “Salon d’Art Moderne,” Paris, France

1984 Official Artist, Summer Olympics, Los Angeles, CA

1992 Outstanding Alumnus, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

1994 Smithsonian Art Archives, endowment of personal archives, D.C.

1996 LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies, Columbia University, NYC

Selected Museum Collections

Art Institute of Chicago, IL

Hermitage Museum, Leningrad, Russia

Armand Hammer Museum, Westwood, CA

National Museum of Sport Art, NYC, NY

Wodham College, Oxford University, England

LeRoy Neiman was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on June 8, 1921, to Lydia Serline and Charles Runquist.

Neiman became the athletic world’s most renowned artist as he took his brush to capture the throbbing competition in basketball, boxing, hockey, gymnastics, swimming, cycling, shotput, billiards, and more.

Neiman portrayed life as a series of epic moments, alive with palpable drama, and enacted on a world stage by the greatest athletes and entertainers.

When LeRoy was five years old, his father left, abandoning the family. Using vibrant colors, Neiman depicted some of the most famous athletes and sporting events of the time. His al fresco paintings of the Olympic competitions made his art visible to millions of people. At SAIC, in a class of 1950 that was rife with talent, Neiman studied alongside Robert Clark (who later changed his last name to Indiana) and Leon Golub.

Neiman spent a decade after his graduation teaching figure drawing and fashion illustration at SAIC.

The first Olympics he worked for were the winter games in Squaw Valley in 1960. By the end of his life, Neiman had painted on five continents and chronicled global culture via thousands of paintings, drawings, and prints. And his TV appearances—donning his handlebar mustache and his waving ever-present Cuban cigar—made Neiman a media showman and one of the world’s most famous living artists.

“I created LeRoy Neiman.

While he was working there he would meet two people who would greatly influence his life. In his spare time, Neiman continued to paint; he made murals on the walls of the mess house that delighted all. For both substance and style, he is immediately recognizable: a visual chronicler of humanity at sport and play, delivered in a bold, colorful amalgamation of elements from Social Realism, Abstract Expressionism and Abstract Action Painting.

For decades, he has delighted charmed viewers with the drama of people at play. As a teenager, Neiman earned money by sketching for local grocery stores. He also painted seaside life in the French Riviera, and visited Venice and Rome, eventually coming home to paint a series for the Indianapolis 500.

Back in America, Neiman settled into a New York City studio that became his main workplace for the next half century.

Instead, his work represents a hybrid of ideals: the pure, radiant color of the Fauvists, the gesture of the Abstract Expressionists, the Social Realists’ desire to visually comment upon the lives of their contemporaries. He created a body of paintings for the “Man of Leisure” series that would later become known as the renowned “Playboy Collection.” As other major publications took to featuring his work and through his association with ABC Television as the official artist for three successive Olympics, LeRoy Neiman achieved an unprecedented level of popularity with the public.

Neiman lived and worked in New York City until his death in 2012, continuing to paint with the sense of energy, wit and good humor that first brought him attention.

Meanwhile, he entered his paintings in regional competitions—and found quick success. Following his Army service, he returned to the United States in 1946, and developed his artistic talent through formal education at the St. Paul Art Center (now the Minnesota Museum of Art) and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Two seminal influences in Neiman’s career developed during his time in Chicago.

Well, I’m a believer in the theory that the artist is as important as his work.”—LeRoy Neiman, www.asama.org

From the late 1960s on, Neiman had a seemingly never-ending string of commissions. Neiman also painted Broadway show sets, illustrated album covers, and created posters for big events such as the Newport Jazz Festival, the Goodwill Games, and the Super Bowl.

“For an artist, watching a [Joe] Namath throw a football, or a Willie Mays hit a baseball is an experience far more overpowering than painting a beautiful woman or leading political figure.” —LeRoy Neiman, 1972

In 1986, Neiman and his wife, Janet Byrne Neiman, created the LeRoy Neiman Foundation to fund programs supporting and advancing arts education.