From New Orleans to Mexico and Back: Modernist Paintings by Olive Leonhardt

During the 1920s, Leonnhardt had been using various styles in her drawings and illustrations. The time she spent in mexico caused a shift in her style in the 1930s, as she was influenced by Pre-Colombian art and elements of cubism and Surrealism that she saw in the work of Mexican painters Jose Orozco, Diego Rivera, and Rufino Ramayo. Using low-key color, geometric lines, simplified forms, and sometimes dream-like compositions, Leonhardt produced striking images of the life and people of Mexico and New Orleans in an authentic, personal, and modernist idiom.

The installation of works from her granddaughter Gay Leonhardt’s collection in the LRMA Christian Gallery is the first to focus on this aspect of Olive’s artistic career.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.