
Image: Stephen Speranza for The New York Times
Painter and filmmaker Alfred Leslie was born in the Bronx, New York in 1927 and currently lives and works in Manhattan. In the late 1940s he emerged as an experimental filmmaker and a second generation Abstract Expressionist painter. In the 1950s and ’60s, he was associated with a community of avant-garde artists and writers, including Joan Mitchell, Larry Rivers, Robert Frank, Frank O’Hara, and Jack Kerouac, with whom he often collaborated. The quintessential Beat Generation film Pull My Daisy (1959) was codirected by Leslie and photographer Robert Frank, with subtitles and narration by Jack Kerouac. In the early 1960s, Leslie's style evolved from pure abstraction to figurative realism, distilling his background in film to be fully realized through painting. Over the last 15 years, he has taken these interests one step further, incorporating them with new digital technology to create paintings on the computer, which he has named Pixel Scores.
In 2018, Leslie was given the Lee Krasner Award in recognition of a lifetime of artist achievement, granted by The Pollock-Krasner Foundation. His most recent body of work, the Pixel Scores were the subject of a major solo exhibition, Alfred Leslie: One Hundred Characters in Search of a Reader, at the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, Texas, from September 2018 through January 2019.
His work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally and is included in the permanent collections of numerous institutions, including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., The Saint Louis Art Museum, The Walker Art Center, and The Whitney Museum of American Art.
Alfred Leslie
Americans, Youngstown, Ohio, 1977-1978
Oil on canvas in three panels
108 x 288 inches
Alfred Leslie
Brenna Gordon, 1984
Oil on canvas
77 x 84 inches
Alfred Leslie
Four Signs, Tulsa, Oklahoma (from 100 Views Along the Road), 1981-1983
Watercolor on paper
45 x 60 inches
Alfred Leslie
Casey Key (from The Lives of Some Women), 1983
Oil on canvas
72 x 108 inches
Alfred Leslie
Reno, (from 50 Characters in Search of a Reader), 2005-2016
Archival pigment print
77 x 60 inches
Alfred Leslie
Isabel Archer (from 50 Characters in Search of a Reader), 2005-2016
Archival pigment print
60 x 78 inches
Alfred Leslie
Exhibition, The Toast is Burning, Bruce Silverstein Gallery, 2016
Alfred Leslie
Elisabeth, Paul and Dargelos, (from 50 Characters in Search of a Reader), 2005-2016
Archival pigment print
60 x 68 inches
Alfred Leslie
Cindy Cresswell, 1976-1977
Oil on canvas
108 x 72 inches
Alfred Leslie
Kitty Foyle (from 50 Characters in Search of a Reader), 2005-2016
Archival pigment print
76 x 60 inches
Alfred Leslie
Exhibition, 100 Views Along the Road, 1978-1983
Alfred Leslie
Horizon at Santa Barbara, California, (from 100 Views Along the Road), 1978-1981
Watercolor on paper
30 x 42 inches
Alfred Leslie
Becky Windmiller (from Some Becky Stuff), 1990
Oil on canvas
58 x 44 inches