the thing about Leo...

"Four Seasons" by Leo Valledor

"Selected Works: Paintings by Leo Valledor (1936-1989)"

Togonon Gallery is pleased to present "Selected Works: Paintings by Leo Valledor". A San Francisco native, Valledor's works are in museums (de Young, Oakland Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Yale Art Museum, among others) and important private collections. Since his death in 1989, Valledor's art has had limited public exposure. The exhibition will include 8 large paintings and 12-14 smaller works, mostly from the 1980's.

During the '70's, Valledor had solo shows at the San Francisco MOMA (1971) and at the de Young Museum (1974). A 1974 review in Art in America identified him at the vanguard of the minimalist movement and later as one of about a dozen international artists whose work were categorized as geometric abstraction. Art critics have placed his work in the league of Ellsworth Kelly and Barnett Newman. Leo's gift as a painter earned him a scholarship at the San Francisco Art Institute. He lived in New York for 7 years, starting in 1961, developed his association with the Park Place Gallery (the first gallery in SOHO) and showed with present day art luminaries such as Sol LeWitt, Robert Smithson, Mark diSuvero, Robert Grosvenor, to name a few. Valledor garnered two NEA grants and taught at Bay area art schools including UC Berkeley, San Francisco Art Institute and the Academy of Art.

Valledor grew up in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, where jazz fueled his artistic energy. In a recent catalog essay, art curator Larry Rinder elaborates on the jazz influence and Valledor's art: "Abandoning the gestural language of abstract expressionism (which would linger on in the Bay Area for decades), Valledor started to explore reduced palettes, geometric shapes, and the spatial dimension of color. Geometry was his style and color was his tone."

Exhibition opens Tuesday, Mar 14 and runs through, Sat, April 8, 2006
Opening reception, Thursday, March 16, 2006,6-8:30 p.m.