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J U R O R ' S   I N F O

leon  nicholas kalas

Leon Nicholas Kalas is a New York-based artist and curator, as well as the Owner/Director of Greco Art Gallery in Havre de Grace, Maryland. He is an in-house curator for several galleries and corporate public spaces such as the Simon Liu Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Fillmore Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Fillmore Atlantic Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, and Con Edison Corporate Gallery.

"As a curator, I see my job to be a form of agency for the artist, but also as sparring partner, critic, tour manager, press officer and admirer. Often I make specific recommendations regarding a show, but again sometimes I do not. I strongly believe in the freedom of the artists. If you are interested in art, you can only let it be what it is. Artists have the potential to bend the rules; if they get predictable, the suspense is gone. 

Art operates in a specific sphere within society, a space of freedom, of critical revision, of questioning, of argument, hope, experience, reflection.  It is the role of the artists to occupy and bring life to this space. This is a global challenge and responsibility, this importance of maintaining artistic independence and freedom should always have first priority."

bio

Painting for Leon is a life force, not a career. His artwork consists mostly of figurative and portrait paintings, however, he experiments in various art movements: Pure Abstract, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Symbolism and Conceptualism.  He  studied portraiture and human anatomy at the New York Academy of Art, The Art Students League of New York, and FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology_. 

He has been exhibited extensively in New York (including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), around the U.S. and in Europe, Morocco, Canada, and the Caribbean.  His paintings are in the Library of Congress, the Clinton Presidential Library, Little Rock AK, The Ministry of Culture in Bucharest, Romania, and the Museul de Arta Cluj-Napoca, Romania and in the private collections of actors Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis, Fashion designer Valentino Garavani, US Senator Roland Borris, and His Majesty, Mohammed VI, King of Morocco. He has been published in NYArt Magazine, Boheme Magazine, Paris, France and Brooklyn Fine Art Magazine  Additionally, Leon has participated in art camps for cultural exchange in Morocco and Romania.

WEBSITE

current exhibitions

"LOOK AT ME NOW: MEN & WOMEN OF THE BOWERY MISSION"

An exhibition of 25 portraits in oil on canvas by Leon Nicholas Kalas, September - December, 2011