Leonard Rosenfeld

Hung up man and running shoe (self portrait), 1990
Graphite on paper
Unframed: 24 x 18 inches (60.96 x 45.72 cm)
Framed: 28 1/2 x 21 1/2 inches (72.39 x 54.61 cm)

Courtesy of Works of Leonard Rosenfeld LLC

Selected by The Drawing Center

Leonard Rosenfeld (1926-2009)

Rosenfeld’s creative journey spanned post-WWII through the Iraq wars, bookending and   reflecting his personal journey and the times in which he lived.

After serving in WWII, he studied at the Art Students League and began a 60-year career as a professional artist.  He befriended and admired the abstract expressionists of the 50s-60s, but took a different path, true to his own vision in subject matter and technique. He was a narrative, and often prescient, artist. He did not eschew difficult subject matter or follow the current craze. His driving force was the work itself and the energy it generated.  Rosenfeld chronicled the space program, the activity of his downtown neighborhood, graffiti artists, subjects Mexican from his numerous travels to that country, 9/11 (having experienced it living and working one block away) and soldiers at war.  He went from Expressionistic gritty drawings of elevated trains and construction sites in Brooklyn and Queens to large oil paintings of astronauts, “rag paintings” with pieces of (sometimes painted) canvas wrapped around stripped stretchers, and large mixed media works made of wire and crushed spray-cans. His final, powerful, Iraq war series was a clear outgrowth of these earlier bold moves. Rosenfeld’s legacy can only be described as one of unique, dynamic, yet consistently disciplined versatility in subject matter and artistic innovation. He was always ahead of his time.

Rosenfeld’s work was exhibited throughout his lifetime, including at Martha Jackson, OK Harris, the Brooklyn Museum, among other venues. In addition to private collections worldwide, he is represented in the New Britain Museum of American Art, the permanent collection of the Art Students League, the National September 11th  Museum in New York, and the Museo de Peter Gray, University of Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.