File Under: l

Dale Loy was born in Los Angeles in 1934. She received a B.A. in history from Stanford University in 1955 and an M.F.A. in painting from American University, Washington, D.C., in 1974. In addition to painting, Loy has held several editorial and reporting positions for the New York Herald Tribune, Mademoiselle, and Horizon Books, among other publications. Her work can be found in several private collections and has been included in exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, and the Southeastern Center of Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, as well as in Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Plainfield, Vermont. Both in her early abstract collage paintings and in her more recent landscape paintings, Loy proves herself to be a master of the brushstroke, applying paint with energy and power. Her landscapes are haunting evocations of the perennial, often contentious, relations between man and nature.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

Patrick LoCicero was born in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1959. He attended Youngstown State University, Ohio, and the Columbus College of Art and Design. He completed a B.F.A. at Ohio State University in 1982 and an M.F.A. at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1986. His paintings, installations, prints, and multimedia work have been shown in California, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. LoCicero's richly layered imagery is characterized by unusual juxtapositions of everyday objects and classical motifs, which play with the viewer's perception of materials and subjects.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

Donald Lipski was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1947.  He earned a B.A. in American History in 1970 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  In Madison, Lipski discovered ceramics working with Don Reitz, which led him to receive an M.F.A. in ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1973 where he studied with Richard DeVore and Michael Hall.  Lipski enjoyed rapidly growing recognition with his early installation Gathering Dust.  In 1978 he won the first of three National Endowment for the Arts awards, followed by a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1988, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1993, and the Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome in 2000.  His work is included in the collections of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago, and many other museums.  In recent years, Lipski has focused his efforts on creating large-scale works for public spaces and is today one of the most identifiable, prolific and original public artists in the United States.  Among his most celebrated works are The Yearling, outside the Denver Public Library, Sirshasana, hanging in the Grand Central Terminal in New York City, and F.I.S.H. at the San Antonio River Walk in Texas.  There are 20 others across the United States.  Donald Lipski currently lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and he is represented by Galerie Lelong in New York.

www.donaldlipski.net/

Scott Lesiak was born in Glenn Ridge, New Jersey, in 1968. He holds a B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts, New York, with an emphasis on three-dimensional design and illustration. Lesiak also studied drawing at Parsons School of design, New York. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Art Director's Club and the Visual Arts Gallery in New York. In 1989 he co-founded Air-Tec Designs, which specializes in airbrush murals and sign fabrication.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

Fernand Léger was born in Argentan, France, in 1881 and died in Grif-sur-Yvette, France in 1955.  One of the great masters of the 20^th century, Léger continues to exert a lasting influence on generations of younger artists.  After being apprenticed to an architect in Caen from 1897 to 1899, Léger worked as an architectural draftsman in Paris from 1900 to 1902.  Although he was refused regular admission to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he took classes there, as well as studying art in Jean-Lèon-Gérôme’s studio at the Académie Julian.  By 1910 he had met most of the Parisian avant-garde and had joined Robert Delaunay, Albert Gleizes, and others in the creation of La Section d’Or group of Cubist artists.  Léger’s version of Cubism emphasized bold designs of primary, tonal colors and streamlined forms suggestive of machines.  Along with members of De Stijl and the Purist movements, he envisioned a positive social function for art. In the 1930s he made two visits to the United States, and he lived in self-imposed exile in New York from 1940 to 1946.  Between 1930 and 1950 he exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, the San Francisco Museum of Art, California, and the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Following his return to France, he had exhibitions at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris and Tate Gallery, London.  Since his death, he has been the subject of numerous exhibitions worldwide.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: the Hechinger Collection, published by International Arts & Artists

Jacob Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1917, and died in his home in Seattle, Washington in 2000.  He moved to New York in 1931 when he began studying with the painter Charles Alson at the Works Progress Administration’s Harlem Art Workshop.  In 1936 he was awarded a scholarship to the American Artists’ School in New York City, and in 1938 he was hired by the WPA Federal Art Project.  During this period the artist began his best-known series, “Migration”, consisting of 60 panels and accompanying text which depicts the movements of African-Americans from the farms and rural communities of the South to the industrial cities of the North after World War I.  The “Migration” Series was exhibited at the Downtown Gallery, New York, and then was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.  He revisited the migration theme in a series of illustrations he did for a book of poetry by Langston Huges, One-way Ticket.  Lawrence, who had been described as a painter of the American scene, an American modernist, and a social realist, was given his first retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, in 1960, and his work has since been part of numerous exhibitions around the world.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1937, Fran Larsen received a B.A. from Michigan State University in 1959. She also studied at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Michigan, from 1967 to 69. Larsen has exhibited her paintings and watercolors at art centers and galleries in the United States. Influenced by German Expressionist landscape paintings of the late 1920s and 1930s, Larsen's images of the Southwest depict the landscape in an almost primitive manner, pared down to areas of color and pattern.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

Ellen Lanyon was born in 1926 in Chicago, Illinois. She received a B.F.A. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an M.F.A. at the University of Iowa, The Courtauld Institute University of London, UK. Her work was exhibited worldwide and is included in collections such as the Library of Congress, Denver Art Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. Lanyon died on October 7, 2013.

Gyongy Laky was born in 1944 in Budapest, Hungary. She received her B.A. and M.A. from University of California at Berkeley. Laky is known as a textile sculptor, and she founded the internationally acclaimed Fiberworks, Center for Textile Arts in 1973. The sculptor claims to use her art to portray environmental issues that are developing throughout our world by using natural materials and waste to create her works. Laky also emphasizes the importance of creating with one’s hands as a form of human ingenuity. She is a professor at University of California, Davis, and received a National Endowment for the arts Fellowship to further develop her work. Her work has been displayed in multiple museums throughout the United States, and she has participated in multiple solo and group exhibitions throughout the world.

Oscar Lakeman was born in Hamilton, Ohio, in 1949. He received a B.F.A. from Kent State University, Ohio, in 1972. His work can be found in several private and corporate collections and has been shown in galleries in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, and Dallas, as well as at the Tampa Museum of Art, the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, and the Isetan Gallery in Tokyo. Lakeman, who has been painting since he was twelve years old, achieved overnight success with his exhibition at OK Harris Gallery in New York in 1984. Typical subjects of his realistic, oversize still lifes are the paintbrushes, jars, cans, and mugs that populate his studio. Striking in visual impact, the works are done partly with an airbrush and partly by slinging or dribbling paint onto the canvas.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.