Leonardo Drew
Born in Tallahassee, 1961
Drew grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut. His works were exhibited publically for the first time when he was only 13 years old. By the age of 15 he was being courted by both DC and Marvel Comics to work as an illustrator. However, Drew would apply his talents to a very different artistic path. He became inspired by abstract works, especially those of Jackson Pollock and Piet Mondrian. Drew went on to attend the Parsons School of Design in New York, and he earned a BFA from Cooper Union in 1985. Leonardo Drew’s work has been exhibited across the USA and internationally. Major solo exhibitions include Vigo Gallery, London, UK (2015); Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco, USA (2014); Selected Works, SCAD Museum of Art at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA, USA (2013); Existed: Leonardo Drew, Blaffer Gallery, Art Museum of the University of Houston, Houston, USA (2009); Palazzo Delle Papesse, Centro Arte Contemporanea, Siena, Italy (2006); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA (2000); The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY, USA (2000); and Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA, USA (1995). Recent major group exhibitions include Unsuspected Possibilities, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA (2015); Summer Group Show, Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki, Finland (2014); Material World, Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO, USA (2013); Museum of Art and Design, New York, USA (2012); From Then to Now: Masterworks of Contemporary African American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, OH, USA (2010); Lost and Found: Selections from the MCA Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, USA (2010); and Black Alphabet: Contexts of Contemporary African American Art, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland (2006). Leonardo Drew’s works are also held internationally in public and private collections such as with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA; and the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ, USA.
