Elder
Art Gallery
Presents
A Journey of Creativity Retrospective:
Leon A. Makielski (1885 – 1974)
2003
Online Show & Additional Works
Time is one of the best indicators of an artist’s talent.
Rarely does one artist perfect the techniques required to
produce masterful landscapes, still lifes and portraits that
are as beautiful and meaningful today as they were almost
a century ago. Leon Makielski was one of those gifted individuals
who devoted his entire adult life to perfecting his skill
as a painter. He was able to capture innocence in a young
child’s eyes, life experiences in an aging face, the
dramatic composition of a floral still life and the enchantment
of American and European landscapes.
 Makielski’s
talent was recognized at a very young age and he was blessed
with a family who understood the importance of encouraging
children to maximize talents in order to enrich not only their
own lives, but the lives of others.
Elder Art Gallery’s A Journey of Creativity traces fifty
years of this great American artist’s work. This retrospective
presents drawings and paintings done by an aspiring artist
whose love for painting took him down a road filled with excitement,
adventure and emotion. His disciplined approach to his craft
enabled him to produce approximately three thousand paintings
over the course of his lifetime.
 Leon
Makielski was born in Morris Run, Pennsylvania in 1885 and
spent the majority of his childhood in South Bend, Indiana.
He studied at The Art Institute of Chicago between 1903 and
1909 and was active in Fox River region near Oregon, Illinois,
during the first decade of 1900. He was awarded the Institute’s
prestigious John Quincy Adams Traveling Fellowship for four
consecutive years. He sailed to Paris in 1909 where he studied
at Academie Julian and Academie de la Grande Chaumiere.
He was active in the painting community in Giverny from 1909
to 1911. His talent was recognized and his work selected to
be exhibited at Le Salons 1910 and 1911 in Paris. During his
time in Europe he visited England, Italy, Germany, Poland,
Belgium and the Netherlands prior to returning to the United
States in 1913. He settled in Ann Arbor, Michigan and taught
at the University of Michigan from 1915 until 1927.
After leaving the academic community he devoted his full attention
to painting portraits of notable American business leaders,
state and national government figures. His portraits are listed
in Smithsonian
Institution’s Catalog of American Portraits, National
Portrait Gallery.
In his book entitled Monet’s Giverny, An Impressionist
Colony, William H. Gerdts says of Makielski’s paintings:
“The landscapes painted by Leon A. Makielski in 1909
to1911 are the most traditional of any of the colonists, many
of them grain-stack pictures that emulate Monet’s series
from twenty years earlier. Judging by the impressive number
of his Giverny pictures, Makielski must have been very prolific,
concentrating on agrarian subjects, as had Theodore Robinson
and others of the first generation.”
 A
Journey of Creativity will present portraits and landscapes
completed while Makielski was a student at The Art Institute
of Chicago, as well as over five other decades. Elder Art
Gallery will display Makielski’s Portrait of Penelope
Peterson, which was exhibited in Le Salon 1911. Upon its return
to the United States the portrait was exhibited at The Art
Institute of Chicago before being returned to the artist’s
private collection in Ann Arbor
A Journey
of Creativity runs from May 31 through July 25, 2003. Elder
Art Gallery is located at 1427 South Boulevard, Charlotte,
North Carolina, 28203. Visit our website for an online catalog
of work included in the exhibition.
contact
us • map
     
|
