Biography
Leonardo Drew is known for creating contemplative, abstract sculptural works, playing upon a tension between order and chaos. At once monumental and intimate in scale, his work recalls post-Minimalist sculpture alluding to America’s industrial past. He transforms accumulations of raw materials, such as wood, scrap metal, and cotton, to articulate overlapping themes with emotional gravitas, from the cyclical nature of life and decay to the erosion of time.
Drew’s mid-career survey, “Existed”, premiered in 2009 at the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston, and travelled to the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, and the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. In summer 2019, he was commissioned to create a new outdoor sculpture for Madison Square Park; this marked the Madison Square Park Conservancy’s 38th public commission and the artist’s first major public art project. Recent solo exhibitions include ones at the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson (2020); North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (2020); De Young Museum – Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, California (2017); Palazzo Delle Papesse, Centro Arte Contemporanea, Siena (2006); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2000).
Leonardo Drew’s works are present in numerous public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Tate, London.
