Leon Garland

1896 - 1941

Born in Borbruisk, Russia, Leon Garland arrived in the United States in 1913 when he was seventeen years old. He settled in Chicago where he became a multi-faceted artist whose mediums included oil painting, textile designs, batik, metal, lithography and stained glass. Throughout his career, he seemed disinterested in selling his work but was concerned about the critiques of his professional peers.

He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and also at Hull House School of Art where he later taught textile and metal crafts. There he met Sadie Ellis, who became his wife in 1927, and they traveled widely in Europe and studied in Paris at the Andre Lhote School.

Garland's paintings focus on the potential dignity of human beings and his hope of seeing a better world. They are a reaction to his traumatic experiences in Russia where he saw many villages and their inhabitants destroyed by strife.

Exhibition venues include the Art Institute of Chicago, M.H. De Young Museum in San Francisco, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. In 1942, the Art Institute of Chicago had a one-person show of his paintings, and in 1948, the American Jewish Art Club held a retrospective show of his works. Other memorial exhibits were at the Witte Memorial Museum of San Antonio, and the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art in Kansas City.