35 Facts About Leon Kelly

Leon Kelly was an American artist born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Leon Kelly is most well known for his contributions to American Surrealism, but his work encompassed styles such as Cubism, Social Realism, and Abstraction.

Leon Kelly was born in 1901 at home at 1533 Newkirk Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Leon Kelly was the only child of Elizabeth and Pantaleon L Kelly.

The prosperity of the firm enabled his father to purchase a 144-acre farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1902, which he named "Rural Retreat" It was here that Pantaleon took Leon Kelly 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 Kelly 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.

At thirteen, Leon Kelly left school and began private painting lessons with Albert Jean Adolphe, a teacher at the School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia.

Leon Kelly learned technique by copying the works of the old masters and visiting the Philadelphia Zoo, where he would draw animals.

Leon Kelly found a job in 1920 at the Freihofer Baking Company where he worked nights for the next four years.

Under these circumstances Leon Kelly continued to develop his skills in drawing and painting and learned of the revolutionary developments in art that were taking place in Paris.

Leon Kelly 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.

Leon Kelly enrolled in the Academy in 1922, becoming what Carles described as "his best student".

In 1925 Leon Kelly was awarded a Cresson Scholarship and on June 14 he left for Europe.

Leon Kelly moved into an apartment at 19 rue Daguerre in Paris and began an existence intellectually rich but in creature comforts, very poor.

Leon Kelly frequented the cafes making acquaintances with Henry Miller, James Joyce and the critic Felix Feneon as well as others.

Leon Kelly's 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.

In 1929 Leon Kelly married a young French woman, Henriette D'Erfurth.

Leon Kelly appears frequently in paintings and drawings done between 1928 and the early 1930s.

Leon Kelly rented a studio on Thompson Street and began working and participating in shows in the city's galleries.

Leon Kelly joined the Philadelphia Public Works of Art Project and worked on sketches for a mural destined for the School Administration Building.

The harsh financial conditions of Leon Kelly's life continued and by the late 1930s, Henriette, who spoke no English and whose only companionship outside the home was Helen Lloyd Horter, returned to France permanently When his divorce was finalized, Leon Kelly began seeing Helen Lloyd Horter, a Philadelphia painter and a fellow student at the Academy and who was now the ex-wife of Earl Horter.

Leon Kelly continued to work in his studio on Brandywine Street in Philadelphia teaching small classes to gain some income.

Leon Kelly's influence is evident in Kelly's notebooks of this time which are full of drawings for World War II battlements and weaponry which echo Leonardo's drawings for the mechanisms of war.

Leon Kelly shared Leonardo's fascination with science and the underlying dynamics of how things work.

In 1942, Leon Kelly moved out of Philadelphia to Helen's summer home in Harvey Cedars on Long Beach Island, New Jersey.

Leon Kelly's stable included Salvador Dali, Arshile Gorky, Yves Tanguy, Roberto Matta, Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp.

Leon Kelly's first show was an exhibition that travelled to the Art Alliance in Philadelphia in 1941.

In 1944 Leon Kelly painted The Plateau of Chess for Julien Levy's exhibit entitled "Imagery of Chess" which opened December 12,1944.

Leon Kelly, who did not play chess, confined his participation to a painting of a double landscape, the dominant larger one depicting a receding plane marked out as a chessboard surrounded by dark spindly leafless trees and cliffs.

Leon Kelly had concluded that American artists had been under the influence of Europe for too long and was looking for another visual tradition that would be closer to the American experience.

Leon Kelly found it in the textiles and began studying Peruvian civilization and art.

Leon Kelly's work had come into its own and the various influences of the forties jelled into a distinctive style.

In subsequent years his work is distinguished by a quality of drawing that bore out Alfred Barr's opinion in 1944 that "Leon Kelly was one of the best American draftsmen".

In 1960 Leon Kelly was awarded the William and Noma Copley Foundation grant and lived for a year in Mallorca, Spain.

Leon Kelly died in 1982 at his home on Long Beach Island.