Saul Leiter: Finding Beauty
The London gallery exhibition at HackelBury Fine Art features painted works on paper, including painted photographs, notebook covers and boards torn from sketchpads and watercolour blocks. All very small in scale, the tiniest fragments are raw edged female portraits, which show a particularly intimate and personal glimpse into the interior world of Leiter鈥檚 studio apartment. The vision of beauty and poetry he found on the busy and gritty streets of New York in the 1950鈥檚 is well known. However, his earliest project, the watercolour and gouache paintings which he worked on continuously from the 1940鈥檚 until his death, is still largely unknown.
Rather than chasing fame, fortune and artistic recognition, it was enough for him to live a simple life, to 鈥榢eep the lights on鈥� as he often said. To live life as an artist on his own terms, and for it鈥檚 own end 鈥� no more, no less. This spirit comes through in everything he created, in particular here the irrepressible nature of his relationship with paint, and his absolute delight in colour. Leiter created many conventionally 鈥榝inished鈥� works that can be seen in the exhibition, but his enjoyment of painting often spilled over to every surface in his everyday life 鈥� letters received and sent, the covers of books and sketchpads, even the flattened insides of grocery boxes; he used everything, and kept everything. There was a democracy in his choice and range of materials which elevated the everyday. His refusal to edit his output in any way also denied any series or piece more value than the others 鈥� his archive in that sense becoming a work of art in itself. Many of his works and studies were created incrementally over a period of decades, a few brushstrokes at a time; a lifelong installation piece that deserves to be uncovered and enjoyed at a similar pace.
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The London gallery exhibition at HackelBury Fine Art features painted works on paper, including painted photographs, notebook covers and boards torn from sketchpads and watercolour blocks. All very small in scale, the tiniest fragments are raw edged female portraits, which show a particularly intimate and personal glimpse into the interior world of Leiter鈥檚 studio apartment. The vision of beauty and poetry he found on the busy and gritty streets of New York in the 1950鈥檚 is well known. However, his earliest project, the watercolour and gouache paintings which he worked on continuously from the 1940鈥檚 until his death, is still largely unknown.
Rather than chasing fame, fortune and artistic recognition, it was enough for him to live a simple life, to 鈥榢eep the lights on鈥� as he often said. To live life as an artist on his own terms, and for it鈥檚 own end 鈥� no more, no less. This spirit comes through in everything he created, in particular here the irrepressible nature of his relationship with paint, and his absolute delight in colour. Leiter created many conventionally 鈥榝inished鈥� works that can be seen in the exhibition, but his enjoyment of painting often spilled over to every surface in his everyday life 鈥� letters received and sent, the covers of books and sketchpads, even the flattened insides of grocery boxes; he used everything, and kept everything. There was a democracy in his choice and range of materials which elevated the everyday. His refusal to edit his output in any way also denied any series or piece more value than the others 鈥� his archive in that sense becoming a work of art in itself. Many of his works and studies were created incrementally over a period of decades, a few brushstrokes at a time; a lifelong installation piece that deserves to be uncovered and enjoyed at a similar pace.
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