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Leo kennEY

(1925 – 2001)

Leo Kenney was born on March 25th, 1925 in Spokane, Washington and moved to Seattle in the 1930’s. A seminal figure in the second generation of Northwest School artists, Leo Kenney was, like many of his contemporaries, largely self-taught. He was set apart from his peers, however, by his prodigious rise to notoriety with a solo exhibition at the age of nineteen -- far younger than even the most well-recognized artists of the period. At age twenty, the Director of the Seattle Museum of Art purchased one of the Kenney’s paintings for the museum’s collection. Kenney began sharing an apartment and painting with his friend and fellow Northwest School artist Richard Gilkey in Seattle after World War II. In 1949, at the young age of 24, he had his first solo show at the Seattle Museum of Art. A New York art dealer, Marian Willard, discovered Kenney’s work through another Northwest artist, Morris Graves, and began displaying his work in her gallery.

In 1962 Kenney experimented with the psychedelic drug Mescaline and his art became more surrealistic and abstract, often featuring colorful circles and other geometric figures in rich, radiant, bright colors. This is the style or work for which he is now best known and admired.

Kenney participated in a group show at the Osaka National Museum of Art in 1982 along with fellow Northwest School artists Paul Horiuchi (1906 – 1999), Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves, Philip McCracken (b. 1928), and Mark Tobey.

Leo Kenney’s work has been exhibited and collected by many prominent artistic institutions and is held in private collections on both coasts of the United States.

For additional information, visit:
Wikipedia
Museum of Northwest Art
Seattle Art Museum
Artezine: A Cyberspace Review of the Arts
Modernism in the Pacific Northwest: The Mythic and the Mystical

The History of the Northwest School

The Northwest School emerged in the 1920s as a direct response to European modernism, which had been gaining popularity domestically since the turn of the century. Across the United States, abstract and conceptual styles were conglomerating around regional art markets, each representing their own form of a new American modernism. In Seattle, a group of artists using the natural imagery of the Pacific Northwest began to gain notoriety, identified by their subtle handling of the region’s earth tone color palette and lighting characteristics. They were known as the Northwest School. Though some artists eschewed the idea of a unified school in the Seattle / Skagit County region, art historians and journalists generally agree that a common aesthetic existed as early as 1930. This movement was led by a small group of artists, whom have since come to be known as “the big four”: Mark Tobey (1890-1976), Guy Anderson (1906-1998), Kenneth Callahan (1905-1986), and Morris Graves (1910-2001). In addition to a shared color palette and iconographic commonalities, the big four also explored certain Asian and Native American motifs, and were heavily influenced by burgeoning European styles, such as surrealism and cubism. The Northwest School was at its peak during the 1930s and 1940s, and boasted a vast and eclectic stable of artists. The work was distinctly regional in composition but was international in appeal. Exhibitions across the globe included the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, and even the Louvre. The work of Northwest School artists is held in institutional collections around the world, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Tate in London, the MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Northwest Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.