BECOMING

1963


San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

WHOSE BLUES

1958
4' X 4'
oil on masonite
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The Vogels' bedroom

"The Vogels’ bedroom with works by Leo Valledor, Gary Stephan, Richard Tuttle, Robert Mangold, Alan Saret, Ron Gorchov, Joseph Kosuth, Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys, and Peter Hutchinson, among others, c. 1975. Photographer unknown "

"Leo Valledor: Tempo & Triumph"

Short clip from "Leo Valledor: Tempo & Triumph" a documentary currently in production.

San Francisco Asian Art Museum features Valledor presentation

Togonon Gallery Director Julina Togonon Speaks at
Roundtable Discussion on Fine Art During
Filipino American History Month Celebration at the
Asian Art Museum
1 :30 pm, October 4, 2009
Togonon Gallery Director Julina Togonon will participate in a roundtable discussion of Artists and scholars about the state of Filipino-American arts today. She will present the story of Leo Valledor, a pioneering Filipino American artist whom critics and curators regarded as a major master of geometric abstraction. Julina will show a trailer for a documentary project by Togonon Gallery on Leo Valledor's artistic life story. Presenting Leo's story will be a window to the history of Filipino -American Fine arts in the U.S and will be a good reference point for talking about the issues: access, biases, challenges, successes, the current contemporary scene and future directions. Celebrate Filipino American History Month with Filipino American artists, authors, and performers.

Roundtable Discussion Speakers
Julina Togonon, Togonon Gallery - Fine Arts
Dr. Ramon Silvestre, Pacific Ethnographic - Traditional Arts
Emma Francisco - Cinema
Peggy Peralta - Cinema and Photography
Anthony Lagarda - Fashion
Anthem Salgado - Spoken Word/Literature
Wilfred Galila - Cinema

Celebrating 422 Years
Filipino American History Month celebrated at the Asian Art Museum October 4, 2009
10:00 am-4:00 pm
FREE admission courtesy of Target*
200 Larkin St
San Francisco, CA 94102


About Leo Valledor
http://www.veritevideo.com/leo.html

Reimagining Space NYTimes Ad

Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York

The Blanton Museum of Art
Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York

September 28, 2008 – January 18, 2009

(from blantonmuseum.org)

This fall the Blanton Museum of Art presents a groundbreaking exhibition of work by artists associated with the Park Place Gallery, a prominent artists' cooperative space in 1960s New York. With their specific aesthetics, the group was often at odds with the predominant style of many artists of the era, and as a result, their work has largely been ignored in chronicles of 1960s art. Organized by the Blanton in collaboration with the University's College of Fine Arts, the exhibition features approximately 40 works and examines the impact of this little known but influential cadre of artists....

...Initially located on the top floor of a five–story loft building at 79 Park Place in downtown Manhattan, the gallery began in 1962 as an informal gathering place for artists who shared similar aesthetic and social concerns and a passion for jazz. The group later developed into a more formal organization, opening in 1965 as a cooperative gallery in Greenwich Village. Five sculptors (Mark di Suvero, Peter Forakis, Robert Grosvenor, Anthony Magar, and Forrest Myers) and five painters (Dean Fleming, Tamara Melcher, David Novros, Edwin Ruda, and Leo Valledor) comprised the group, and Paula Cooper served as the gallery's director for most of its existence....

...Between 1963 and 1967, the Park Place Gallery group was at the center of contemporary artistic activity in New York and several members were included in exhibitions that would later be defined as “Minimalist.” As Reimagining Space argues, however, the group eluded categorization into the dominant movements of the 1960s, specifically Minimalism and the reigning focus on flat painting. As Fleming stated, "It was impossible to identify what we were. That was our freedom."...

Artist Panel in conjunction with Reimagining Space
Friday, September 26, 3:30 PM
In conjunction with the opening of Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York, Mark di Suvero, Dean Fleming, Tamara Melcher, and Forrest Myers, four of the founders of the Park Place Gallery, will talk informally about their pioneering venture in New York in the 1960s. The panel will be moderated by guest curator and UT Art History professor Linda Dalrymple Henderson. Location: ACES Building, Avaya Audtorium (rm. 2.302), 24th and Speedway on the UT campus.
Funding for this program is provided by the Carolyn Harris-Hynson Centennial Visiting Professorship in Fine Arts.

Director's Circle Preview Party
Friday, September 26, 6 – 8 PM
Celebrate the Blanton's new fall exhibitions Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York and The New York Graphic Workshop, 1964 – 1970.
For Director's Circle members only

Members-Only Preview Day
Saturday, September 27, 1 – 5 PM
Preview the Blanton's new fall exhibitions before they open to the public: Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York and The New York Graphic Workshop, 1964 – 1970.
Open to all Blanton members.

Curator's Tour: The New York Graphic Workshop: 1964 - 1970
Thursday, October 2, 12:30 PM
Gina McDaniel Tarver, curatorial associate in the Blanton's Latin American department, leads a gallery talk titled “Juan Trepadori or How to Succeed as a Latin American Artist in New York.”

B scene: Art from the Underground
Friday, October 3, 6 – 11 PM
New York, New York
Celebrate the opening of the Blanton's fall exhibitions at the museum's monthly art party. Go beneath the surface and experience the wild side of art from New York in the 1960s.
$5 members/$10 non-members

Expert Perspective: Reimagining Space
Thursday, October 9, 12:30 PM
John Clarke, Annie Laurie Howard Regents Professor in Fine Arts at UT, puts the Park Place Gallery into the context of the art world of the 1960s.

Expert Perspective:
Thursday, October 16, 12:30 PM
Craig Wheeler, Samuel T. and Fern Yanagisawa Regents Professor in Astronomy and Distinguished Teaching Professor, discusses the Space Age and cosmology at the Park Place Gallery.
Funding for this program is provided by the Carolyn Harris-Hynson Centennial Visiting Professorship in Fine Arts.

Curator's Tour: Reimagining Space
Thursday, October 23, 12:30 PM
Linda Henderson, David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professor in Art History and Distinguished Teaching Professor at UT and guest curator for Reimagining Space, explores the Park Place Gallery Group's interest in the fourth dimension.

'The New American Abstraction'

'La Nouvelle Abstraction Americaine 1950-1970' by Claudine Humblet will be released in an English translation, The New American Abstraction 1950-1970 (hardcover), on November 13, 2007.

Art In America Review of show at Mitchell Algus Gallery

by Michael Amy in the March 2007 Issue

Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology

"Here with a new introduction and updated bibliography, is the definitive collection of writings by and about the work of the 1960s minimalists, generously illustrated with photographs of paintings, sculpture, and performance."

Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology By Gregory Battcock features Skeedo (1965)

New York Times review

Martha Schwendener reviews "ART AND SPACE: Park Place and the Beginning of the Paula Cooper Gallery" at the Archives of American Art, New York Regional Center Gallery
UBS Building, 1285 Avenue of the Americas between 51st and 52nd streets
Through Feb. 23, 2007

If SoHo in the 1960s has been mythologized into a contemporary art utopia, you need only peruse documents relating to Park Place and the early days of the Paula Cooper Gallery, acquired recently by the Archives of American Art and on view in their New York office, to gain a fuller perspective.

Park Place started in 1963 when artists including Mark di Suvero, Robert Grosvenor and Edwin Ruda began exhibiting work on the top floor of the building that held their studios in Lower Manhattan. The arrangement was eventually moved and formalized in an 8,000-square-foot space on West Broadway financed by collectors, like Vera and Albert List, who paid the gallery’s expenses in exchange for one work by each artist each year. Park Place closed in 1967, and Paula Cooper, its director and president at the time, opened a space on Prince Street, the first commercial gallery in SoHo...

The Brooklyn Rail review

Jim Long reviews 'The Filipino Roots of Minimalism: Leo Valledor and Mario Yrisarry' at the Mitchell Algus Gallery for The Brooklyn Rail.

...Leo Valledor’s painting starts with geometry, but it’s about practically everything else. He uses geometric division and color the way a musician (which he was) might give life to the phrasing of a line or passage. At his most reductive, Valledor employs a single zigzag division made up of multiple “fingers” that lock perfect pairings of color to the painting surface. These read as “rays,” each originating at points in the infinite distance, from the left and right, simultaneously arriving in the form of dovetailing vectors to create an experience of light-drenched fullness...