Framont

"Rusty Armor" Oil on Canvas by American Artist Leonard Contino

Oil on canvas by Brooklyn native, Leonard Contino (1940-2016)

 Signed, dated and titled ‘Rusty Armor’ on verso.

Leonard Contino was a Brooklyn-born, self-taught abstract artist whose tenacious exploration of pictorial space spanned a fifty-year career.

 In 1962, at the age of 19, he suffered a severe spinal cord injury in a diving accident. Paralyzed from the shoulders down, he retained some mobility in his arms and hands, and needed to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

While in rehabilitation, Contino met a fellow patient, the sculptor Mark di Suvero, who would become a lifelong close friend and encouraged him to paint.

 Contino's first show was at the seminal Soho gallery, Park Place.

 His paintings are in a number of museums and private collections,  including the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Foundation of Contemporary Art, Geneva.

The New Paltz, NY Dorsky Museum of Art had a major retrospective of the artist’s works in 2019.

41“ H x 35“ W x ¾ “ D