LEON BIBEL
Leon Bibel loved art, music and science equally. In the early 1930’s, he kept a record of his progress in all these disciplines in a journal called We Achieved. These detailed entries reveal his curiosity about everything around him and surely predicted the many directions he would pursue during the course of his life.
He grew up and studied in San Francisco. He worked with Diego Rivera’s assistant on several mural projects. It was his work, though, on the WPA Federal Art Project in New York City, that utterly transformed Leon into knowing that creating art was at the core of who he was.
The camaraderie of the studios and workshops, the availability of supplies and presses, the excitement of the city…everything was an adventure. He thrived and was astonishingly productive, working on silk screens, stone lithographs, linocuts, oils, and mixed media projects. There was a lot of experimentation and sharing of information, all of which gave him intense energy.
War in Europe was in the news and poverty was still a major factor in everyday life, so the salary of $23.86 a week, to do what he loved so much, was nothing short of a miracle. And, he could respond and react to world events and the environment around him through his art, which he very often did with deep emotion, but also with clear understanding and great skill.
In the years after the project ended, he found that making a living creating art would not support his new family. He moved to rural New Jersey and spent the next 18 years selling chickens and eggs.
In 1960, Leon’s closest friend and neighbor across the road was George Segal. George had decided to move into sculpture and encouraged Leon to take whatever stretchers and canvas were in the studio and start painting again.
By then, Leon’s wife had been teaching and his kids were more independent, so he felt that he could direct his energy towards his love of art once again.
The WPA far behind him, he began a journey through the art movements of the mid-century. He tried to find his way, connecting who he had been to who he was now, as an artist.
The paintings are large and were done in a very compressed period of time in 1960-1963. The energy, excitement and skill jump out. Not connected to any “school”, but having absorbed elements of currents swirling all around him, Leon found his way to create subsets that are sometimes narrative, sometimes abstract, some intensely colored, others more muted. There is some Op Art playfulness, a far journey from the days of his images of heroic workers and those despairing of war and poverty.
After this whoosh of intense creativity, there was a break as he started to show these paintings in the mid-1960’s. Then, he changed his path to “sculptural” paintings, three-dimensional wood creations that hang on walls in frames.
In this work, he explored themes as diverse as the beginning of the computer age, the human/machine dichotomy, sports, the alphabet, love, and the animal kingdom.
A life in art passionate, devoted. Always trying to ways to tell stories and expressing the links of his life. East coast, West coast. Realism, abstraction. The elegance of the machine; what it is to be human.
All along the way, he showed profound humanity and dedication to the truth. We were so lucky to have known him.
Courtesy of Phyllis Wrynn, Park Slope Gallery,
Brooklyn New York