Leon Berkowitz

“I am endeavoring to find that blush of light over light and the color within the light; the depths through which we see when we look into and not at color.”

Although Leon Berkowitz is most frequently associated with Washington D.C., where he spent a large period of his life, he received his education across a wide range of institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the Art Students League in New York, and academies across Paris, Florence, and Mexico City.

In 1945, Berkowitz established the Washington Workshop Center for the Arts, which became an important platform for creative production and dialogue across the visual and perform-ing arts, bringing acclaimed and emerging artists from across Washington and New York together. Through its participants the Center would become closely associated with the development of the Washington Color School, as an extension of Color Field Painting.

Berkowitz eschewed the positioning of his work within that move-ment throughout his career even though he played a pivotal role in the founding of the group, noting his commitment to capturing the poetics of color over the formal inquiries of the group. There is nothing confrontational in his work, no abrupt juxtapositions, only smooth, glowing rich colors. The concentrations of color occur balanced at the center of each canvas. The paintings are pleasing, seductive, and easily consumed. All achieved through a mystifying technique, hinting at being hand-painted, yet impossible to explain.

Photo courtesy of The Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution