June Leaf
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June Leaf (August 4, 1929 – July 1, 2024) was an American visual artist known for her abstract
allegorical As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughou ...
paintings and drawings; she also worked in
modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
kinetic sculpture Kinetic art is art from any medium that contains movement perceivable by the viewer or that depends on motion for its effects. Canvas paintings that extend the viewer's perspective of the artwork and incorporate multidimensional movement are ...
. She was based in New York City, on
Bleecker Street Bleecker Street is an east–west street in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is most famous today as a Greenwich Village nightlife, nightclub district. The street connects a neighborhood popular today for music venues and comedy as well as a ...
in
NoHo NoHo, short for "North of Houston Street, Houston Street" (as contrasted with SoHo), is a primarily residential neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded by Mercer Street (Manhattan), Mercer Street to the west, the Bowery ...
, and Mabou, Nova Scotia.


Biography

June Leaf was born on August 4, 1929, in
Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
, Illinois, to Ruth (Ettleson) Leaf and Phillip Leaf. She studied ballet and did some modeling, then was enrolled for three months between 1947 and 1948 at the Institute of Design (formerly known as the New Bauhaus), taking classes with artist Hugo Weber. She left school and traveled to
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
in 1948, focusing on creating and identifying abstraction and patterns in her work. In 1954, she returned to the school for her B.A. degree in
Art Education Visual arts education is the area of learning that is based upon the kind of art that one can see, visual arts—drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, and design in jewelry, pottery, weaving, fabrics, etc. and design applied to more practi ...
from
Roosevelt University Roosevelt University is a private university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1945, the university was named in honor of United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The university enrolls arou ...
and the same year her M.A. degree in Art Education at Institute of Design. Leaf returned to Paris in 1958–1959 with a
Fulbright Grant The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...
for painting. When she returned, she moved to New York City in 1960. She married filmmaker and photographer,
Robert Frank Robert Frank (November 9, 1924 – September 9, 2019) was a Swiss American photographer and documentary filmmaker. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled ''The Americans'', earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his ...
in 1975. In 2016, the
Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...
held the retrospective exhibition "June Leaf: Thought Is Infinite." In the same year, another retrospective was held at the Edward Thorp Gallery in New York, entitled "June Leaf: A Survey, 1949-Present". Her work is included in many permanent art collections, including the
Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...
, the
Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...
, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and the
Minneapolis Institute of Art The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the List of largest art museums, largest ar ...
. June Leaf died from
gastric cancer Stomach cancer, also known as gastric cancer, is a malignant tumor of the stomach. It is a cancer that develops in the lining of the stomach. Most cases of stomach cancers are gastric carcinomas, which can be divided into a number of subtypes ...
in Manhattan, on July 1, 2024, at the age of 94.


Works


''Coney Island'' (1968)

Created with pen and ink and colored pencil on paper, 4 ×  in (35.6 × 42.9 cm). June Leaf's 1968 drawing Coney Island is one of her most straightforward images, devoid of the surreal, visionary creatures and places that occupy her creative mind and guide her work. Yet its depiction of a middle-aged couple gazing at an amusement park carousel succinctly encapsulates what her art does: If we envision these protagonists stepping onto the ride, they become an apt metaphor for Leaf's viewers, who similarly must venture into a deeply imagined realm, grounded in real human experience, in which the artist deploys the fantastic to explore the folly of our existence and the possibilities of consciousness.


''The Girl with the Hoop'' (1980)

Created with acrylic and fiber-tipped pen on paper, × 11 in (21.6 × 27.9 cm). A relatively simple
graphite Graphite () is a Crystallinity, crystalline allotrope (form) of the element carbon. It consists of many stacked Layered materials, layers of graphene, typically in excess of hundreds of layers. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable ...
and ink drawing from 2013 of the artist “threading” her eyes with her fingers found Leaf literally drawing a line out of her brain/vision. The sheet revisits a motif developed in Threading the Story through the Eye of a Needle from 1974, in which a hand encapsulates an imagined scene seemingly pulled forth—threaded through—the eye of its creator. The hand joins the head explicitly in these images. Leaf's representations and interpretations of thought as “infinite” seem to be her meditations on imagination's expression in the physical world through the artist's corporeality: ruminations on the creative process. The subject of how the mind's contents become manifest through the artist's hand is addressed further in a series of works representing substances that issue forth from the brain in various ways.


''Making # 2'' (2014–2015)

Artist made sewing treadle, wire, copper, thread, x 22 x   in. Making #2 includes the sewing machine base. It is entirely fabricated and features a dancing figure, delicately rendered as a wire line drawing within a circular arc that vibrates when the treadle is worked or the wheel connected to it is turned. Leaf possessed made many ingenious devices with triggers or other parts that activate little figures. These beg to be manipulated, evoking the delight of those 19th-century hands-on mechanical animations that seem so magical.


Awards

Leaf was awarded an
Honorary Doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...
, Humane Letters in 1984 from
DePaul University DePaul University is a private university, private Catholic higher education, Catholic research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded by the Congregation of the Mission, Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from ...
and in 1996 from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD). She received many awards including the Distinguished Artists Awards from the Canadian Council in 1984 and a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant in painting in 1989.


Bibliography

* Enright, Robert, ''June Leaf''. Benteli, 2006. * Leaf, June, ''Record 1974/1975.'' Göttingen:
Steidl Steidl is a German-language publisher based in Göttingen, Germany. Founded in 1968 by Gerhard Steidl, it publishes photobooks. Overview The company was started by Gerhard Steidl.Bill Kouwenhoven, "Off to see the wizard", ''British Journa ...
, 2010. . * Leaf, June, ''Thought Is Infinite''. Göttingen: Steidl, 2016.


References


External links


Oral history interview with June Leaf (2009 Nov. 16 – 2010 May 17)
from
Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washing ...
,
Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...

The Visual Artist Who Thinks of Herself as a Dancer or an Aviator
interview in the New York Times Nov. 1, 2022 * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Leaf, June 1929 births 2024 deaths National Endowment for the Arts Fellows Illinois Institute of Technology alumni Artists from Chicago Roosevelt University alumni American contemporary painters 21st-century American women painters 21st-century American painters 20th-century American women painters 20th-century American painters Deaths from stomach cancer in New York (state)