LEO VALLEDOR (1936-1989)
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York has acquired two paintings by Leo Valledor for its permanent collection. Odelight, 1964 and Serena, 1964, both acrylic on canvas and each measuring 35 15/16 × 109 ½ inches, were acquired through a generous gift by Mark di Suvero. These paintings are excellent examples of Valledor’s explorations into color and space in the early days of the Park Place Gallery, an artist cooperative in lower Manhattan in the 1960s. Valledor and di Suvero met and were friends at the California School of Fine Art in San Francisco. After moving to New York, they, along with 8 other artists, were also founding members of the Park Place Gallery.
Leo Valledor, Odelight, 1964, Acrylic on canvas 35 15/16 × 109 ½ “
Artwork: © Leo Valledor Estate. Image: © Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Leo Valledor, Serena, 1964, Acrylic on canvas 35 15/16 × 109 ½ “
Artwork: © Leo Valledor Estate. Image: © Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
The Following Leo Valledor Selections Available
At David Richard Gallery
Leo Valledor, Between Heaven and Earth, 1974, Acrylic on canvas, 120" x 120"
Leo Valledor, At First Sight, 1983, Acrylic on canvas, 43" x 48"
Leo Valledor, Juxtipo, 1986, Acrylic on canvas, 72" x 62"
Leo Valledor, Untitled 19, 1982, Acrylic on canvas, 72" x 48"
Leo Valledor Free At Last, 1982, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 48" x 60" x 2"
About Leo Valledor: Leo Valledor (1935-1989), a Filipino American artist who grew up in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, studied Abstract Expressionism at the California School of Fine Arts (currently, San Francisco Art Institute) and was part of the “Beat” scene—the cross cultural and dynamic fusion of visual art, jazz music and poetry. He exhibited his artwork at the 6 Gallery in San Francisco from 1954 to 1957 alongside Jay de Feo, Manuel Neri and Peter Forakis, among others. His first exhibition was the same year and location of Alan Ginsberg’s first public reading of his poem, Howl. The late 1950s marked a dramatic shift in Valledor’s art to a reductive palette and simple geometric shapes. In 1961 he moved to New York and in 1962 became a founding member of the Park Place Group, an artist collective and exhibition venue for experimental art in Lower Manhattan. The founding members, many also transplants from the West Coast, were comprised of five painters: Dean Fleming, Tamara Melcher, David Novros, Edwin Ruda, Leo Valledor and five sculptors: Mark de Suvero, Peter Forakis, Robert Grosvenor, Anthony Magar and Forrest Myers. The gallery director was Paula Cooper. The group formed to explore their mutual interest in literal and illusory space, music and social concerns. In New York, Valledor’s new minimalist tendencies were appreciated by and exhibited with Sol Le Witt, Robert Smithson, Ed Ruda, Mark di Suvero, Peter Forakis and Tamara Melcher, among others. In 1968, Valledor returned to San Francisco where he continued to explore his unique abstract painting that extended musical harmonies and rhythms to shaped canvases and colors. Many of his paintings also produced optical effects as they played with the tension between the two-dimensional picture plane and three-dimensional space. Leo Valledor had over 22 solo and two person exhibitions in important galleries and museums on both coasts, including Park Place Gallery and Graham Gallery in NY and 6 Gallery, Modernism, Dilexi Gallery and Daniel Weinberg Gallery in San Francisco, as well as the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Valledor’s artwork is included in many important public and private collections, including: Achenbach Foundation, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA; Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, CA; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, State Fair Community College, Sedalia, MO; De Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA; The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: “Fifty Works for Fifty States”; Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan, UT; Oakland Museum of California; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA; St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway; US Department of State Art in Embassies Program, Washington D.C.; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.
Artworks: Copyright © Leo Valledor Estate
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