LEO VALLEDOR
Shapin’ Up

August 17—September 15, 2012

Opening reception: Friday, August 31, 5:00-7:00 PM

Online Catalogue with Essay by Peter Frank


David Richard Gallery, LLC
Railyard Arts District
544 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501
p 505-983-9555 | f 505-983-1284
www.DavidRichardGallery.com


David Richard Gallery is pleased to present Shapin’ Up, a painting survey and the gallery’s first solo exhibition for Leo Valledor (1936-1989). The exhibition will feature paintings from 1980-1989. 

Valledor, an Asian American artist who grew up in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, studied abstract expressionism at the California School of Fine Arts (currently, San Francisco Art Institute) and was part of the “Beat” scene—the cross cultural and dynamic fusion of visual art, jazz music and poetry. He exhibited his artwork at the 6 Gallery at the age of 19, the same year and location of Alan Ginsberg’s first public reading of his poem, Howl. This period also marked a dramatic shift in Valledor’s art to a reductive palette and simple geometric shapes. In 1961 he moved to New York where he was an early member and founder of the important Park Place Group along with Ed Ruda, Mark di Suvero, Peter Forakis and Tamara Melcher, among others, and where his new minimalist tendencies were appreciated by and exhibited with Sol Le Witt, Robert Smithson and Robert Grosvenor. In 1968, Valledor returned to San Francisco where he continued to explore his unique abstract painting that extended musical harmonies and rhythms to shaped canvases and colors. Many of his paintings also produced optical effects as they played with the tension between the two and three-dimensional planes. 

Leo Valledor had over 22 solo and two person exhibitions in important galleries and museums on both coasts, including Park Place Gallery and Graham Gallery in NY and 6 Gallery, Modernism, Dilexi Gallery and Daniel Weinberg Gallery in San Francisco, as well as the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Valledor’s artwork is included in many important public and private collections, including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), De Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, Seattle Art Museum, Oakland Museum, Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia Museum of Art, and St. Louis Museum of Art among others. 

David Richard Gallery is located in the Santa Fe Railyard Arts District and specializes in post-war abstract art including Abstract Expressionism, Color Field, geometric, hard-edge, Op, Pop, Minimalism and conceptualism in a variety of media. Featuring both historic and contemporary artwork, the gallery represents many established artists who were part of important art historical movements and tendencies that occurred during the 1950s through the 1980s on both the east and west coasts. The gallery also represents artist estates, emerging artists and offers secondary market works.

Associated Artist

• Leo Valledor

Associated Exhibitions

• LEO VALLEDOR Shapin' Up
  August 17, 2012 - September 15, 2012
  MORE INFO

Associated News

• February 27, 2022
  How this son of a Filipino fruit picker helped shape a trendsetting New York movement
  ABS-CBN News
  E.A. Santamaria
  Feb 27 2022
  
  


• March 5, 2020
  David Richard Gallery opens an exhibition of paintings by Leo Valledor
  ArtDaily.com
  March 5, 2020
  
  


• March 3, 2020
  Leo Valledor: Dimensional Space
  GalleriesNow.net
  March 3, 2020
  
  


• March 1, 2020
  Press Release - Leo Valledor "Dimensional Space"


• May 4, 2018
  Leo Valledor
  Wall Street International Magazine, 05/04/2018
  
  


• April 19, 2018
  Press Release - Leo Valledor 'Color as Space'


• March 7, 2018
  Exclusive 360 - Leo Valledor: Curved at David Richard Gallery
  GalleriesNow.Net, 12/29/2018
  
  


• February 27, 2018
  Press Release - Leo Valledor Curved


• August 9, 2012
  Press Release - Leo Valledor "Shapin' Up"