World artist LeRoy Neiman depicted five Olympics in rushing colour, drew for Playboy and painted career of Muhammad Ali over 15 years.
American painter LeRoy Neiman was best known artist for evoking the kinetic energy of the world’s biggest sporting and spare-time events with bright quick strikes.
LeRoy Neiman was a good media-savvy artist who has knew how to fascinate audiences with his immediate interpretations of what he observed. In 1972, he drafted the world chess tour between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer in Reykjavik, Iceland, for a live television audience. American artist has also produced live drawings of the Olympics for television and was the official computer artist of the Super Bowl for CBS station.
Olympics and sports artist LeRoy Neiman has died in New York at age 91
LeRoy Neiman was fascinated with large game of animals and said he has twice traveled to Kenya to paint lions and elephants in the Safari nature in his brand vibrant palette, but it was the essence of a basketball or football game, swim meet or cycling event that gained his imagination most.
As a young man LeRoy Neiman studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois. After a stint in Paris, LeRoy set up shop in New York and began showing his exhibitions in different galleries. As a portraitist, he painted such iconic figures as Frank Sinatra and Babe Ruth, managing to capture how the public saw them.
LeRoy Neiman’s paintings, many accoplished 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.
‘ I’ve had a lucky life ‘ / American painter and sketch artist LeRoy Neiman dies aged 91 in NY
American star LeRoy Neiman was a self-described workaholic who rarely took vacations and had no hobbies. He worked every day in his New York City home studio at the Hotel des Artistes near Central Park that he shared with his wife Janet more than fifty years.
But he enjoyed his life. Neiman told once to the Associated Press : ‘ It’s been fun. I’ve had a lucky life. 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. ‘
