Leo Meiersdorff 1934-1995
Leo Meiersdorff was born on December 14th, 1934, in Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany. Meiersdorff grew up at the family estate in East Prussia, where he discovered his love for music at a very early age. He practiced Beethoven and Mozart on the old family piano with so much passion and enthusiasm that everybody foresaw a future for him as a concert pianist. All that changed when after the war he was sent to Berlin to study art and classical music at the academy, and he heard for the first time, on the armed forces network radio, the music of the Americans: JAZZ. He became fascinated with its sound and rhythm; Ludwig and Amadeus went out the window as Leo switched to jazz piano and trombone. While during the day he attended his art classes studying the German expressionist masters, his evenings belonged to the rehearsals of his own jazz band. In 1954 he went on a tour with his band, first around Germany, then throughout Europe. But even as a full-time musician Leo kept his sketchbook and watercolors handy and painted his surroundings and the people he met whenever he could. When the band finally returned to Berlin in 1958, a gallery owner saw his works and offered him a show. The exhibition was a smash hit: all of the exhibited works sold in the first 3 days and one of the enthusiastic ctritics saw in him the most promising young artist of the postwar German avant-garde. Other artists would have enjoyed the sudden success and tried to build a future on it, but Leo always needed new challenges, and so in 1959, with the money he'd made, he landed in New York to conquer the new world. He hoped to find a publisher for his work, or a gallery that would give him an exhibition, but in vain. He was new and unknown, with a strange, unpronounceable, long name. For months he hung around jazz clubs, relieving the pianist and the trombone player now and then, while painting the musicians in their typical movements and poses. The patrons loved his pictures and invited him for drinks, but did not buy art. When he finally ran out of money, he joined a band that had an offer to play in New Orleans. There at the "birthplace" of jazz, Leo found his new home and his artistic inspiration forever. Besides jazz, he discovered another favorite subject of his here: he ventured into the kitchens of Bourbon Street restaurants and captured the grand expertise of the Creole chefs and their culinary creations. His sketches, originally black and white, became more and more vibrant and exaggerated, giving new dimensions to his free and lucid style. At the beginning, Leo just gave away his paintings to his musician friends as gifts, but very soon they became known and popular in New Orleans, and the galleries of the French Quarter started looking for the source of these images and placing orders with him.Gradually Leo's paintings brought in more money than his music, and he switched again. The professional musician who painted on the side turned into a full-time painter who only played music for relaxation. He showed up wherever jazz was played and pulled out his sketchbook. While traveling back and forth between New York and New Orleans, he met and befriended the biggest jazz artists--Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Hines, Woody Herman, Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton, just to name a few--who all loved his art; very soon he was asked to design record covers for Chiaroscuro and several other famous recording companies. In the late seventies Leo met Stefan and Ida Gommerman just as they opened their Eva and Steve Dorog Gallery in West Hollywood, CA. They put two of his paintings in their show window. The gallery customers' response was so enthusiastic that SIG FINE ART was founded to publish Meiersdorff's work under a worldwide, exclusive contract. SIG FINE ART published, in addition to posters and limited edition lithos, the only Meiersdorff serigraphs (silk screens) ever made (The Jazz Bird, Gumbo Special, The First Lady of Jazz and The Trio). The Gommermanns advertised Leo in all major art magazines, arranged shows for him and exhibited his works at art expos around the country. In the early 1980s, when 3-dimensional (cut-out) art came into fashion, Stefan, himself an artist (Gomy), was intrigued by this new art form and wanted to bring some of Leo's joyous characters into 3-dimensional life. Leo loved the idea and designed a special line of black-and-white images, to be colored by hand and used for the Gomy 3-Ds. Gomy later developed his own 3-D style, but his first works (the most musical and culinary images) are basically Meiersdorffs in 3 dimensions, and were a big hit from the very beginning. Though Leo loved his expressionistic works, his commercial success and the ever-growing demand for his culinary and musical images left him little to no time for his very rare genre- and landscape paintings. He was overloaded with commissions and his joyous characters popped up everywhere: from wine labels, restaurant menus and record covers to backdrops for the biggest TV jazz shows and jazz festivals. When Meiersdorff attended the International children's foundation exhibition in Stockholm (for which he designed posters), he met the king and queen of Sweden. They turned out to be collectors of his work and he was invited to the palace. When Miles Davis received his lifetime award at the Grammys, one of Meiersdorff's paintings was blown up and projected on a background screen. Woody Herman commissioned him to paint a 60-foot-long mural for his studio and SIG FINE ART had a standing order from the late composer genius Henry Mancini for every new Meiersdorff release. During his lengthy career, Leo designed over 400 record covers and sold several hundred-thousand posters. There are numerous restaurants and bars around the globe that have nothing but his pieces on their walls. People say that seeing his culinary images makes their mouth water, and viewing his musicians, they can hear them playing. As with every big artist, he had his own unique style and can easily be distinguished from all the other artists trying to copy his work.
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