Description:

Barry Le Va
California, New York, (1941 - 2021)
Stone Step
lithograph
Numbered 39/300 and signed verso.

Biography from the Archives of askART: Barry Le Va is known for his sculpture and drawing. LeVas work often creates a relationship with his audience through problem solving and investigation, and by bringing the viewer into the artistic experience or concept. His sculpture and drawings are explorations of space, material, and procedure, and he has drawn from many disciplines including Conceptualism, Minimalism and Neo-Constructivism.

Barry LeVa was born in Long Beach, California in 1941. An only child, he spent many of his childhood summer vacations in Yuma, Arizona with his godparents. His godfather, an amateur cartoonist, taught him how to draw. Throughout his high school years, LeVa studied architecture and mathematics, graduating in 1960. His early ambitions to be an architect were later abandoned, however, in favor of a fine arts career.

In 1963, he moved to Los Angeles where he entered the Otis Art Institute. His work from this early period reflects his skill in drawing and knowledge of cartoon art. Uninspired by western artists at the time, he looked to the Abstract Expressionists for inspiration, admiring the scale of their work but not their ideas. Between 1965 and 1967, LeVa accompanied some of his drawings with non-traditional sculptural materials like canvas, felt, and ball bearings. After graduating from the Otis Art Institute, he relocated to Minneapolis, Minnesota to teach at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

During the late 1960s, his exhibited work was an exploration of scale and space, some pieces occupying the entire gallery space. By 1970 he had moved to New York City where he spent time recuperating after an operation for cancer of the thyroid.

LeVa often exhibited his work internationally during the 1970s, and in 1974 was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for sculpture. His attention to large-scale sculptural arrangements continued through the 1980s, but he experienced additional health problems in 1984 with a damaged heart valve. In the years following an open-heart surgery, LeVa spent time in Europe where he worked on wood and block prints.

His work as been exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions including the Sonnabend Gallery, New York (1981), the Texas Gallery, Houston (1978), The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (1978) and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, West Germany (1986).

  • Dimensions: 12 1/2"H x 17 1/2"W
  • Medium: lithograph

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April 29, 2023 11:00 AM EDT
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