Leon Oks Collection Stara d Arts
The Fine Art Gallery & Publisher
Represents
Leon Oks 2
Leon Oks The ever growing audience who are drawn to and moved by the work of Leon Oks, have no doubt an interest in Leon Oks the man, and the genesis of what we see and try to understand about the power of his work and its emotional impact. Unlike many people in today’s changing digitalized world, who have trouble finding themselves, Leon Oks knew very early, in a childish, formless way, what excited him and gave him a feeling of intense joy and pleasure. Not yet old enough to really understand, he looked at the world around him and was captivated by the beauty of colors, of bodies and faces, the light and the dark. These all touched his little boy’s heart, and he knew even then that his passion for creating art was implanted. Leon was born in a small Ukrainian town of Zhitomir in the former Soviet Union. He was one of three siblings (one older sister and a younger brother). In 1941, when he was two years old, his father was inducted into the Soviet army and was soon killed in the line of duty. His surviving family (including grandparents) was uprooted from their modest, small house in Zhitomir, and forced to flee over and over again, to safer, unoccupied places which soon became unsafe. They endured constant instability and frustration in a dreadful, hopeless World War II environment. In 1945, the war was over, and they were able to return to their little house in Zhitomir. It was during those post war years (when he was six) that he began to draw and paint at night in the kitchen which became his nocturnal studio while the family was asleep. As he grew and matured, his passion to become an artist also grew and matured. Without instruction from anyone he began to go on his own to art museums to copy the Masters who were his heroes, his models, who taught him much in their brilliant, inspiring silence. His formal training at the School of Fine Arts was rigorous and disciplined, but it was in the Soviet Republic, where the focus of art was to manipulate visual political slogans that were offensive and distasteful to him. His first exhibition of portraits, landscapes, and colorful compositions were quickly censored, and more than half of the paintings were removed before the public was allowed in. Leon’s arrival in the U.S. in 1980 was more than a liberation of his body, but an exhilarating, freeing of his heart, mind and artistic soul. He could bring his own unique dimension to the canvas. The seeds that were germinating internally for so long flourished and flowered into the paintings we see today; the female form, lush and sensuous, alone or in intricate organic clusters, the tottering little villages evoking bittersweet nostalgia of his childhood, and his forest of birch trees, which breathe and sway and speak to us. His work of myriad variation makes us know him. 3
Leon’s Women As a disciplined, academically based painter, Leon Oks is able to smoothly weave that basic underlying foundation into a tapestry of his own unique fanciful inspiration. As one very important catalyst for his interior vision, he uses the female form. He paints her with fluid brushstrokes, luminous sparkling color and dynamic movement, multiple perspectives with flowing lyrical lines and resplendent sensuous beauty. His women are vessels of creative power and span the range of human emotions. She is NATURe, MOTHeR, JOY, SORROW, STRUggLe. He abstracts the essence of his subject and makes it his own.
Leon’s Memories In his bittersweet nostalgia of his years in the Ukraine, under suffocating Soviet bureaucracy, Leon Oks is able to retrieve the sweetness and ignore the bitterness. With a palette of soft ambers, burgundies and golds, he evokes idyllic, rounded, shaky, charming villages, soft flowing landscapes, and swaying birch trees, alive in their ever changing wooded golden greens. The mood is warm, soft and seductive, as we recognize the depth and emotional power of Leon’s work.
LeON OkS-cHILdHOOd MeMORIeS-2024-gW
4
SWANS (deTAIL) 5
LeON OkS-ASTONISHMeNT-4656-gW 6
LeON OkS-AUTUMN-3040-gW 7
MeMORY OF THe PAST (deTAIL) 8
LeON OkS-MeMORY OF THe PAST-3030-gW 9
LeON OkS-AWAkeNINg OF THe ARTS-3024-gW 10
AWAkeNINg OF THe ARTS (deTAIL) 11
LeON OkS-beHINd THe STAge-4052-gW 12
LeON OkS-HARMONY IN NATURe-3060-gW.TIF 13
LeON OkS-OcTObeR MONTH-3040-gW 14
LeON OkS-RHYTHM-3040-gW 15
LeON OkS-SHAbbAT 330-2430-gW 16
SHAbbAT 330 (deTAIL) 17
LeON OkS-cHILdHOOd TOWN-3024-gW 18
LeON OkS-dReAM 1-2436-gW 19
LeON OkS-AbOve THe MOON-3036-gW 20
LeON OkS-dReAM II-2430-gW 21
LeON OkS-MeMORY OF THe PAST-3636-gW 22
LeON OkS-OkS 165-3258-gW 23
LeON OkS-PARTY gIRLS-3636-gW 24
LeON OkS-PASSION-5644-gW 25
LeON OkS-PeAce-3040-gW 26
LeON OkS-ReALITY FANTASY-3048-gW 27
LeON OkS-PARTY gIRLS
28
LeON OkS-SHAbbAT 328 PORTRAIT-2430-gW 29
LeON OkS-SOUd OF SILIeNce-3040-gW 30
LeON OkS-SPRINg ORcHIdS-3040-gW 31
LeON OkS-SWANS-2436-gW 32
SWANS (deTAIL) 33
LeON OkS-TOUcH OF MOON-3030-gW 34
LeON OkS-TWO ORcHIdS-2430-gW 35
LeON OkS-WHITe HARMONY_3618-gW 36
LeON OkS-WILd ORcHIdS-3636-gW 37
3305 Laguna Canyon Road Laguna Beach, CA 92651 USA Tel: 949 376 9800 Fax: 949 376 9900 Cel: 949 870 2070 Toll Free: 1 866 97 STARA chrishan@staradarts.com www.staradarts.com