Born in New York City, David A Leffel graduated from Parson’s School of Design while also attending Fordham University at night. Between 1959 and1960, with the help of a Merit Scholarship, he learned the fundamentals of chiaroscuro painting at the Art Students League of New York in Frank Mason’s class. Only a few years later, he returned to the League as an instructor and in the next 25 years left an important legacy of influence with the thousands of students whose lives he touched while teaching them about life and art in the north light of Studio 7, a classroom that boasted such past instructors as Edwin Dickinson and Frank Vincent Dumond.
Leffel’s work has been exhibited in numerous important shows, including the National Academy of Design in New York City, the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, OK, and the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City where he was a member of the artists’ group NAWA (National Academy of Western Artists), which later became the Prix de West show. In their annual show his work received one silver medal and three gold medals, his first gold being awarded to a self-portrait. He was part of the artists’ stable in New York City’s Grand Central Galleries in the 70s and 80s, and as his reputation as a consummate artist grew, he received a visit from one of history’s most intriguing political figures, Madam Chiang Kai-shek. Her interest in Western painting and specifically in Leffel’s work may explain his current widespread popularity in China, which started years ago with an invitation to the First American Art Exhibit in Beijing, China and reemerged in a recent traveling exhibit of realist artists with the America China Oil Painting Artists League (ACOPAL).
Leffel is not only recognized by his peers as a painters’ painter, he is also considered by many to be no less than the artistic reincarnation of Rembrandt. He continues to spread his special understanding of how painting works with students worldwide through membership to an online instructional library, The Artists Guild at Bright Light Fine Art.
Leffel’s work resides in the permanent collection of the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, OK; the Museum of the Southwest in Midland, TX; the J.B. Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY; the Elizabeth T. Greenshields Foundation in Montreal, Canada; and the New York Racing Association in New York, NY, which acquired his famous painting of Belmont Race Track. His work is also found in some of the most important private collections compiled today. In May of 2016 Leffel will have a comprehensive retrospective at the Weisman Museum in Malibu, California where work from as young as age 12 will hang along side his most recent masterpieces.
A talented writer, Leffel has authored two books, An Artists Teaches: Reflections on the Art of Painting and Self-Portraits: A Journey of Insight, both published by Bright Light Publishing. Bright Light Fine Art and director George Gallo are working on a documentary of his extraordinary life that should be completed by early next year.
Links to Videos/Articles:
- Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Leffel/131099530323945
- Website: www.davidleffel.com
- Workshops and news: http://davidleffel.com/workshops/
- David’s DVDs and books: http://davidleffel.com/books-dvds-giclees/
Representative Works:
As a young woman in Oklahoma City in 1978, Sherrie McGraw was urged by her teachers Richard and Edith Goetz to move to New York City to study at the famed Art Students League where they had studied within the lineage of Robert Brackman and George Bridgeman. In her initial years at the League, McGraw studied primarily with the legendary artist David A Leffel, but she also learned anatomy through Robert Beverly Hale and Jon Zahourek at the New York Academy, and later with one of the art world’s leading experts on drawing and painting the horse from life, Ned Jacob.
Scott Fraser is one of America’s top contemporary realist painters. With his appreciation for art history, ranging from the Dutch Masters to American modernists like O’Keeffe, Fraser masterfully transitions to the post-modern era through his deft and complex still life paintings of contemporary subjects. Referencing the classical tableaux, Fraser‘s contemporary arrangements juxtapose modern mundane objects in tantalizing ways that tease, intrigue and challenge the viewer. Drawing upon objects with personal or autobiographical meaning Fraser’s works often combine humor with a sense of mystery that is evocative and mesmerizing not only because of his riveting concepts, but also because of his impeccable and painstaking attention to beauty and craft.
Todorovitch is a contemporary painter who has always looked to the past to understand the future of his painting. Introduced to the idea of skilled draughtsmanship at an early age, he has been immersed in figurative art and has forged a body of imagery in California for the past twelve years. By embracing fundamental principles of picture making, he works to develop paintings that are harmonious and innovative. While primarily figural, his paintings aim to create a visual field of atmosphere, space, and light, occasionally evoking subtle narratives within the viewers. They draw people in from a distance and keep them investigating with technical nuance and poetry at the surface. While he believes painting should be challenging to himself and the audience, he says “a work of art should evolve intuitively from a marriage of experience and expression.” Working in California, Joseph Todorovitch aims to explore and express the present and future with paintings and sculpture that acknowledge the rich tradition of representational art.
