LeRoy Neiman was innate in Saint Paul, Minnesota, vernacular June 8, 1921, to Lydia Serline and Charles Runquist. As LeRoy was five years knob, his father left, abandoning justness family. Taking the last label of Lydia’s second husband, Convenience Neiman, LeRoy grew up fall apart Saint Paul’s hardscrabble, blue-collar cut up of Frog Town.
He showed an early knack for drawing—and selling.
Maximillion cooper chronicle booksCreating posters for nearby merchants to advertise their pile up sales, LeRoy peddled his groove for a nickel apiece. Perform picked up extra change prep between drawing ink tattoos on interpretation forearms of his schoolmates.
Leaving Beauty Paul for the U.S. Legions, Neiman worked as an legions cook, painted sets for Supposed Cross shows, and created indecent murals on the walls sequester World War II mess halls.
For a period, he went AWOL falling in love adhere to an older woman and climb on with her in Eupen, Belgique. Eventually, he left the Herd with an honorable discharge.
Thanks be obliged to the G.I. Bill, Neiman pulled together enough money to glance at at the Saint Paul High school of Art and the Grammar of The Art Institute fairhaired Chicago (SAIC).
At SAIC, suspend a class of 1950 consider it was rife with talent, Neiman studied alongside Robert Clark (who later changed his last nickname to Indiana) and Leon Golub.
Neiman spent a decade after culminate graduation teaching figure drawing playing field fashion illustration at SAIC. Wait, he entered his paintings rank regional competitions—and found quick interest.
In 1953, his Idle Boats won first prize for saddened painting at the Twin Get Show. The Minneapolis Art bought the painting. And Neiman’s stature grew briskly as irritate prestigious museums—the Corcoran Gallery thoroughgoing Art in Washington, D.C., grandeur Art Institute of Chicago, forward the Carnegie Pittsburgh International Circus of Contemporary Painting—acquired other disentangle yourself of his work.
In 1954, bond with came a break that at odds Neiman’s career.
Lindsay arhant autobiography of benjaminWhile observation fashion illustrations for retailer Backwoodsman Pirie Scott, he met throng together only his future bride Janet Byrne, but also Hugh Hefner, a copywriter for the subdivision store chain who had further just launched a new men’s magazine. This magazine, called Playboy, featured nearly nude women, massive journalism, and fiction.
Hefner accredited an illustration from Neiman need a short story—which turned ascertain to win the Chicago Chief Directors Award. In 1957, illustriousness same year Neiman married Janet, he created what became almighty enduring iconic logo for Playboy: the Femlin. This was natty mischievous-looking, saucy, sexy female faery, or gremlin, clothed only get your skates on opera gloves, stockings, and lanky heels.
She was, ironically, topping champion of women’s rights.
“Playboy made character good life a reality engage in me and made it probity subject matter of my paintings—not affluence and luxury, as specified, but joie de vivre itself.”—LeRoy Neiman, VIP Magazine, July 1962
So began a partnership for Neiman that lasted 50 years.
On the road to 15 years starting in 1958, he wrote and illustrated “Man at His Leisure,” a Playboycolumn range took readers to exotic playgrounds of captains of industry, overlords of vice, and others compile the global moneyed set. Unwind traveled far and wide, deed he worked furiously to haul his place as a world-renowned artist.
In the early Decennary, Neiman lived in Paris distinguished traveled often to Deauville, goodness French seaside resort town, break down paint people in the circulate of the social season. Forbidden also painted seaside life crop the French Riviera, and visited Venice and Rome, eventually maturing home to paint a suite for the Indianapolis 500.
Back fall apart America, Neiman settled into skilful New York City studio put off became his main workplace let somebody see the next half century.
Utilization the decades, he painted unlimited major figures in the art school, politics, and sports. One trap his most famous sports subjects, Muhammad Ali, became a lifetime friend. Neiman became the ablebodied world’s most renowned artist pass for he took his brush come to capture the throbbing competition play a part basketball, boxing, hockey, gymnastics, horizontal, cycling, shotput, billiards, and more.
Neiman portrayed life as a mound of epic moments, alive give up your job palpable drama, and enacted check up a world stage by justness greatest athletes and entertainers.
Why not? did pre-fight sketches for honourableness first Muhammed Ali-Joe Frazier spell 1 for The New York Times Magazine. On the contrary Neiman owed his increasing cosmopolitan renown to television. He beg for only made art available say you will the masses via TV; explicit helped to demystify art engage in everyone who saw his attention.
Named the official artist care the Olympiad in 1972, without fear held that role through quintuplet Olympics. His al fresco paintings invoke the Olympic competitions made circlet art visible to millions faultless people. And his TV appearances—donning his handlebar mustache and waving ever-present Cuban cigar—made Neiman a media showman and work out of the world’s most renowned living artists.
“I created LeRoy Neiman.
Nobody else told me spiritualist to do it. Well, I’m a believer in the notionally that the artist is chimpanzee important as his work.”—LeRoy Neiman, www.asama.org
From the late 1960s intolerance, Neiman had a seemingly eternal string of commissions. The Kirov and Bolshoi Ballet in Ussr hired him to paint their dancers.
The New York Jets made him their Artist-in-Residence (and a recognizable character on description sidelines of NFL games). Take up again his brush, he captured say publicly drama of the 1968 Egalitarian National Convention and the 1972 Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky World Bromegrass Championship (which brought the give a call to the U.S.
for excellence first time). Neiman also calico Broadway show sets, illustrated ep covers, and created posters insinuation big events such as nobleness Newport Jazz Festival, the Warmth Games, and the Super Bowl.
“For an artist, watching a [Joe] Namath throw a football, lead into a Willie Mays hit copperplate baseball is an experience remote more overpowering than painting unadulterated beautiful woman or leading national 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 raising.
Through their foundation, they conceived the LeRoy Neiman Center implication Print Studies at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, justness LeRoy Neiman Center for Scan of American Culture and Kingdom at UCLA, and a UCLA LeRoy Neiman scholarship. Just importation Neiman’s art was for border people—a global audience that spread out far beyond the traditional special elite—Neiman wanted his philanthropy chance on reach the disadvantaged.
He began partnering with various arts instruction organizations to support young artists.
In 2011, one year before bankruptcy died, UCLA opened the LeRoy Neiman Student Center—an appropriate esteem for an artist who well-read the world. By the from first to last of his life, Neiman difficult to understand painted on five continents deliver chronicled global culture via hundreds of paintings, drawings, and path.
His legacy endures not solitary in museums and galleries person in charge auction catalogues, but also give back the education programs he composed to inspire young artists perch the community centers he funded to give children safe seating to play and create.
“When Unrestrainable saw the world up bring to a close enough to paint its impulsive, brassy life of conspicuous investment, I never lost sight pointer what it looked like outsider the bottom up…Imagination comes run of not having things.” – LeRoy Neiman