Leon Nicholas Kalas's Page

Short artist statement:

Painting to me is a life force, not a career. My work consists mostly of figurative andportrait paintings, however, I do experiment in various art movements; PureAbstract, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Symbolism and Conceptualism. AllArt movements interest me. I have studied portraiture and human anatomy at theNew York Academy of Art, The Art Students League of New York, and FIT (FashionInstitute of Technology. My work has been exhibited extensively in New York andMaryland galleries and, in June of 2005 one of my paintings was exhibited atthe Metropolitan Museum of Art. My work is collected throughout the UnitedStates, Europe, Morocco, Canada, and the Caribbean. My work is also in theLibrary of Congress, the Clinton Presidential Library, in Little Rock AK, TheMinistry of Culture in Bucharest, Romania, and the Museul de Arta Cluj-Napoca,Romania. I have been published in NYArt Magazine, Boheme Magazine, Paris,France, Brooklyn Fine Art Magazine and various newspapers such as Caribbean News, The Brooklyn Eagle and The Brooklyn Currier. I have participated in artcamps for cultural exchange in Morocco and Romania. Some of the  important portraits that I have Painted are for actors Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis, Fashion designer Valentino Garavani, US Senator Roland Borris, His Majesty, Mohammed VI, King of  Morocco, HRH King of Greece, Fidel Castro of Cuba, and Harry Belafonte.