Leo Manso Exhibition Brochure

I grew up in a small-town, an ethnic enclave in Western Pennsylvania. Travels My immigrant family worked in the steel mills, exchanging serfdom Manso increasingly began to focus his artistic process on his inner world and under the Hapsburg Dynasty in Eastern Europe for the serfdom of sought to create a sense of tranquility in his work to counteract the tumultu- capitalism—my grandfather would always chuckle with irony. A friend ous experience of living in the modern world. He once remarked “We live in and I played hooky from school one day, and drove down near the West a world moving very fast with no fixed values. I know who I am when I have Virginia border looking for white-water rapids, suitable for rafting. We my art around me. I strive to create some kind of order in what I perceive is a got lost and came across the Fallingwater Estate by Frank Lloyd Wright. chaotic world.” He found himself becoming more absorbed in the art of the The waterfall was roaring. The cantilevers, the proportions were nothing East and an aesthetic focused on transcendence made possible by meditative like I had ever seen before in my working-class upbringing. I went into a engagement which involved circumventing the ego. Beginning in 1964, Manso trance, literally, non-verbal and kind of rapturous, at the site of this archi- developed an interest in Tantric Art and spent eight years reading extensively tectural wonder. As a conflicted adolescent, I kept returning to the site in Buddhist, Hindu, and Tantric philosophies along with the history of India. whenever I could, alone, immediately transcend, successfully duplicating The religious and ritualistic engagement that the artist admired in Eastern art the first experience I had there—architecture as rapture. It was so new and explosive, to a young man like me, nothing like the high school rote classroom experience at all. I have since traveled the world extensively, looking to capture that rapture again. And I successfully did it. Again and again. At Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the temples on the Plains of Bagan in Burma, the huge medieval Chola temples in South India, the Guggen- heim in Bilbao, the Palladian villas along the Brenta Canal near Vicenza Now that the twentieth century is approaching its finale, it is in Italy. possible, and to my mind plausible, to hold that its single greatest That meditative trance-like state of mind, that lets nothing else in, not Leo Manso (1914–1993) was a significant artist and educator in both New York and Early Work invention in art is that of the collage. One of collage’s masters even the tiniest distraction, overtook me when I had all of Leo Manso’s Provincetown art circles and helped to foster Provincetown’s reputation as a major Leo Manso was a social realist as a young artist (albeit in the Cubist manner), during the past decade is Leo Manso, whose impeccable sense of work, face-up for selection to this exhibition in a storage room on Cape art colony. He was the primary force in organizing two important cooperative gal- believing he should paint socially acceptable paintings that were popular in the placement and musical silence amidst a noisy world calls up the Cod, and I went into a poetic spin at the sight of it all. My mind was reel- leries in Provincetown: the 256 Gallery (1951–1957) and Long Point Gallery (1976– ‘30s and ‘40s. The artist soon discovered that what really engrossed him was a quattrocento of Manso’s beloved Italy, if not its grandeur. Manso’s ing, non-verbal and profoundly in awe, of the beauty of it all. Later, I tried 1998), the longest-lived and most influential artist-run gallery in Provincetown’s more transcendental art inspired by nature. The artist had grown up in a major to imagine the rapture Leo must have felt while working on some of these work is small in scale, secular and intimate in its subjects, but rich history. Manso and the painter Victor Candell established the Provincetown metropolitan area and was unaccustomed to being in the natural world. At the pieces, and even when not working on these pieces. Leo started schools, no less implacable in its ethical integrity, its aesthetic of formed Workshop (1958–1976), which became what the artist historian Dorothy Gees age of 31, on a trip to Mexico in 1945, he had a revelatory experience of “the galleries, collectives with other artists; his life was all about art. He would sensuousness. Seductively beautiful as the work is at first sight, Seckler described in a 1965 interview for the Archives of American Art as “easily rhythm of nature and man’s place in it,” as he explained it. He began to per- go to Italy or India and pull out of the ether the essence of their atmo- it holds its own like iron, a visual poetry that never compromises, recognized as the most important school at this time” in Provincetown. ceive light not only as a “manifested, living thing,” but as a “spiritual entity.” sphere, their vibe, their visuals, and their art. never loses its inner life. Leo Manso’s works have my deep respect Manso first came to Provincetown in 1947 with his wife Blanche and two This idea was reinforced for him when he came to Provincetown. The late I want to welcome you, the audience, to this show, and sincerely hope as does the artist as a man. young sons Peter and Victor and established a studio and home for his family. paintings of Monet and Turner, along with the 13th century Sung painters from that some or all of the rapture is transferred to you as you view the work Stimulated by the town’s artistic milieu, he made it his summer home. At the China, attracted him at this time as he felt that they included the viewer as a ROBERT MOTHERWELL, March 1991 of the genius of Leo Manso. time, he earned his living as a book designer and illustrator but decided in that participant in their emotional response to nature. Manso began to consider same year to switch careers and became an art teacher. the possibility of a similar immersion in landscape for his own artistic process. GENE FEDORKO Born in the Bronx, Manso’s father was a jeweler and artisan with his own shop. He enjoyed walking outside and made many drawings recording his subjective New York City and Provincetown His mother had a fine singing voice and loved going to the Jewish theater. The experience of natural phenomenon, which he then transposed into the painting family originated from Southern Russia around Odessa. Manso was involved in art medium emphasizing color, surface and shape. The artist has referred to his for his entire life. Fundamentally self-taught, he began to draw around age 3, was early landscape work as “Abstract Impressionism” because of the influence of educated in the New York City school system, and studied for a short period at the light and atmosphere. National Academy of Design and the New School for Social Research. Manso was born during the same period as the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, however his abstract paintings were more influenced by Eastern Above, left to right: Ming Tanka, n.d., collage on masonite, 36 × 25 in. Collection of Provincetown philosophic ideas and art and his travels to countries such as India and Nepal Art Association and Museum; Kabuki, n.d., collage, 39 1/2 x 27 in. Private Collection; Eyrie (Homage rather than western sources, though both traditions were apparent during his to Kunitz), 1984, collage, 40 × 33 in. Gift of the artist. Collection of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum; Testament, c.1976, collage, 24 1/2 x 30 1/4 in. Private Collection long career. Right: Robert Motherwell and Leo Manso, courtesy of Mary Ellen Abell Collages Art Students League, Brown, Cooper Union, Columbia, Cranbrook, New York, Manso earned a reputation as a leading figure in collage. He began working with Pratt, Smith, and Yale. There were exchange scholarships offered to additional art collage and assemblage around 1957. Two of his collages entered the collection of schools along with Fulbrights and other fellowships. It can be stated unequivocally The Museum of Modern Art in 1962. As we have seen, he utilized collage and mixed that the Provincetown Workshop was responsible for many gifted art students LEO MANSO media materials in his Tanka, Yantra, and Kathmandu series. The artist enjoyed the spending the summer in the Provincetown for almost 20 years, predating the Fine collage aesthetic because of its sense of simultaneity. He was engrossed by what he Arts Work Center by ten years. COLLAGES AND OTHER WORKS called the “dynamism of a work in the making.” He collected many found objects at Manso was a seminal figure in the development of Long Point Gallery in 1976 the Provincetown dump, on the beaches, and from city streets. Other items in his as it was his concept to organize a cooperative enterprise in tandem with other collages and assemblages were hand-made such as dyed and painted fabrics. artists whose work he respected. He initially approached Fritz Bultman, Budd Robert Motherwell who considered collage as possibly the “single greatest inven- Hopkins, and Tony Vevers who, in turn, recommended other potential members, JULY 2–OCTOBER 17, 2021 tion in art” in the 20th century, wrote (1991): “One of collage’s masters during the most of whom were middle-aged and had a long history with Provincetown.

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