Biographical Information

Leroy Neiman
American 1926

Leroy Neiman was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, De Paul University, and the University of Illinois. He taught at the Art Institute of Chicago's school for ten years. Neiman moved to New York City in 1963 when he had his first one-man show at the Hammer Gallery. Since then he has continued to portray the people and events of the world he knows best, or which intrigue him most. His best-known works are sports scenes, a reflection, he believes, of the fact that sports are universally a dominant force. He was the official artist for ABC-TV at the Olympic Games in 1972 and 1976, and at the Winter Olympics of 1980. Neiman's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world, including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Hermitage in Leningrad.

Since 1970 he has published over 290 limited editions of serigraphs which have become as much sought after as the prints of Miro, Chagall, and Picasso. His work is in the permanent collections of many museums including the Baltimore Museum of Fine Art, the Minneapolis Institute Of Arts, The Museo de Bellas Artes en Caracas, the Hermitage in Leningrad, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Through his art work Neiman has explored contemporary leisure, all the pastimes and places people enjoy, and particularly the world of sports and the world of entertainment. LeRoy Neiman's style explodes with the dramatic intensity of Abstract Expressionist brush strokes, which pick out action that is strikingly accurate. This unique combination is so appealing that Neiman has brought art into the lives of more people than most post-war American artists put together.

Neiman is probably the most popular painter and printmaker in America. He is one of the few artists of the 20th century whose name has become a household word in millions of American homes.