Leo Valledor
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Leo Valledor | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1936 Fillmore District, San Francisco, California, US |
| Died | 1989 (aged 52–53) San Francisco, California, US |
| Alma mater | San Francisco Art Institute |
| Years active | 1953–1989 |
| Style | hard-edge painting, minimalism |
Leo Valledor (1936 – 1989)[1] was a Filipino-American painter who pioneered the hard-edge painting style. During the 1960s he was a member of the Park Place Gallery in SoHo, New York City, which exhibited many influential and significant artists of the period. He was a leader of the minimalist movement in the 1970s.
Valledor was born in 1936, in Fillmore district, San Francisco. His close friend, who he often referred to as "cousin," was San Francisco artist Carlos Villa.[2][3]
From 1953 until 1955, Valledor was a student at the California School of Fine Arts (known currently as San Francisco Art Institute) under auspices of a scholarship.[4] However, as art historian Paul J. Karlstrom wrote, "Despite a year as a scholarship student at CSFA, Valledor was largely self-taught, but he was gifted and quickly developed a gestural abstract style reflecting the influence of Mark Tobey.[citation needed] In addition to Tobey, his earliest influences were Paul Klee, Arshile Gorky, and Bradley Walker Tomlin."[5]
Career
In 1955, he had his first solo show "Compositions" at the historical Six Gallery. He showed his "Black and Blue Series."[6]
When he moved to New York City in 1961 he became a member of the influential Park Place Gallery in SoHo, Manhattan, further delving into his avant garde interests of minimalism and conceptualism. It was considered the first gallery in SoHo, and included artists like Edwin Ruda, Mark di Suvero, Peter Forakis, and Forrest Myers.[4]
In New York at the Kaymar Gallery in March and April 1964 Valledor also exhibited with Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd.[7] He also had a solo show at the Graham Gallery on Madison Avenue in New York City. In 1968, Valledor left New York returning to San Francisco.[8] He exhibited there at such establishments as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the San Francisco Art Institute.[9] He was at the vanguard of the minimalist painting movement in the mid 1970s, and later in the seventies he exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.[9]
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Valledor became the Art Exhibition Director and teacher at Lone Mountain College in San Francisco. He was a guest teacher at the University of California, Berkeley. He created a roof mural for the Department of Public Works approved by the San Francisco Arts Commission. He received his first National Endowment for the Arts Artist Fellowship Grant in 1981, and received another grant in 1982. In the eighties he received a California Arts Council artist-in-residence grant in the South of Market community. He also taught at the San Francisco Art Institute. He lived in San Francisco until his death in 1989, aged 52 or 53.[10][11]
