Leonardo Drew

Leonardo Drew was influenced by his early visual surroundings, in particular the city dump, which occupied every view from his childhood apartment. As a boy, he spent hours culling through remnants and throw-aways discarded by others, providing a new life to many items. “It’s this metaphor and consistent weight of being which drives my work to this day,” Drew has said. “Though I do not use found objects in my work (my materials are fabricated in the studio) what has remained from my early explorations are the echoes of evolution…life, death, regeneration.” Because he arduously processes raw materials, Drew rejects the viewer expectation that his art is comprised of found detritus. Inspired early-on by Jackson Pollock and Pablo Picasso, he traveled to Europe in 1983 and encountered art by Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, and artists associated with the Arte Povera movement. This solidified Drew’s deep appreciation for materials and their cultural significance. 

Drew has exhibited nationally and internationally, and his work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; the Caldic Collectie in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, among others. 

Courtesy of Crown Point Press