About the artist:
Mexican abstract painter and sculptor, a leading figure in the Modern Mexican art.
From early childhood Leonardo Nierman showed great interest in drawing and music.
In 1951 he received his Bachelor degree in Physics and Mathematics at the University of Mexico. Later he studied
the Psychology of Colour and the Harmony of Form in Space, both static and dynamic. These studies were
instrumental in shaping up his vision of non-objective interpreter of nature and, in doing so, launched him on a
search for relationship between abstract art and the cosmic phenomena.
The first artwork of Nierman was done in the 1950s, influenced by the art of Kandinsky, Klee, Miro and Chirico, as
well as the abstract, cubist and surrealist movements. However, much of his later work has been shaped by his
interpretation of nature and a search for the relationship between abstract art and the cosmos, spurred by his
studies of color and movement in the 1950s.
In 1956 Nierman painted a mural at the School of Commerce of the University City in Mexico. To paint the mural,
he made an appointment with Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros to ask for advice, receiving such especially
the mixing of colors. The mural was later destroyed when the wall was taken down.
Since 1959 Nierman has had over 100 exhibitions in America, Asia, Australia and Europe.
The University of Mexico awarded him an Honorary Degree in 1960.
The Museum of Modern Art in Mexico acquired his paintings "Solar System" and "Tenement" in 1962. From this
time, until today the global community of collectors of his works are so numerous.
Leonardo Nierman creates paintings of abstract landscapes that are highly colorful and full of motion and velocity
as though propelled by music. He has been called the Jackson Pollock of Latin American art.
"Painting," he wrote, "is to me the aperture through which it is possible to enter a certain world; in it the viewer
may find an endless number of magic images, objects, remembrances, associations, fears, joys, hopes and
dreams.… It is my non-verbal world surrounded by combat, stress and sights; joy, sensuality and death. Dreams,
moments of ecstasy in the creation of images. Piercing the darkness, radiant smoke and dust, a world of volcanic
vapors, lava, storms, prehistoric vegetation, bottoms of oceans, enchanted caves filled with stars, precious
stones and cosmic winds ascending into the silence of infinity."
Since 1965 Nierman has been a Life Fellow of "the Royal Society of the Arts" in London, and in 1993 he became
a patron of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in London.
In 2002 the mayor of Chicago proclaimed December 19 as a Leonardo Nierman Day, and in 2003 he received the
Gloria Award from the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago.
Artworks by Nierman are collected worldwide, by not only individuals, but corporations, museums and galleries:
the gallery of the Vatican, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museo de Arte
Moderno in Mexico City, the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, The Art Modern Gallery of New York and Phoenix
Art Museum.
