The Arts

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Painter evoked energy of top sporting events

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 06/22/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Artist LeRoy Neiman (CP)

NEW YORK -- LeRoy Neiman, the painter and sketch artist best known for evoking the kinetic energy of the world's biggest sporting and leisure events with bright quick strokes, died Wednesday at age 91.

Neiman also was a contributing artist at Playboy magazine for many years and official painter of five Olympiads. His longtime publicist Gail Parenteau confirmed his death but didn't disclose the cause.

Neiman was a media-savvy artist who knew how to enthrall audiences with his instant renditions of what he observed. He also produced live drawings of the Olympics for TV and was the official computer artist of the Super Bowl for CBS.

"It's been fun. I've had a lucky life," Neiman said in a June 2008 interview with The Associated Press. "I've zeroed in on what you would call action and excellence.... Everybody who does anything to try to succeed has to give the best of themselves, and art has made me pull the best out of myself."

Neiman's paintings, many executed in household enamel paints that allowed the artist his fast-moving strokes, are an explosion in reds, blues, pinks, greens and yellows of pure kinetic energy.

He has been described as an American impressionist, but the St. Paul, Minn., native preferred to think of himself simply as an American artist.

"I don't know if I'm an impressionist or an expressionist," he told the AP. "You can call me an American first.... (but) I've been labelled doing neimanism, so that's what it is, I guess."

He worked in many media, producing thousands of etchings, lithographs and silkscreen prints known as serigraphy.

But his critics said Neiman's forays into the commercial world minimized him as a serious artist. Neiman shrugged off such criticism.

"I can easily ignore my detractors and feel the people who respond favourably," he said.

But it was the essence of a basketball or football game, swim meet or cycling event that captured his imagination most.

"For an artist, watching a (Joe) Namath throw a football or a Willie Mays hit a baseball is an experience far more overpowering than painting a beautiful woman or leading political figure," Neiman said in 1972.

With his sketchbook and pencil, trademark handlebar moustache and slicked back hair, Neiman was instantly recognizable.

Neiman was a self-described workaholic who seldom took vacations and had no hobbies. He worked daily in his New York City home studio at the Hotel des Artistes near Central Park that he shared with his wife of more than 50 years, Janet.

"What else am I good for?" he said in 2008. "I don't think about anything else."

-- The Associated Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 22, 2012 D2

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