Leon Nicholas Kalas

Painting to me is a life force not a carrier. My work consist mostly of figurative and portrait paintings, however, I do experiment in various art movements; pure abstract, abstract expressionism, minimalism, symbolism, and conceptualism. All art movements interest me. I have studied portraiture and human anatomy at the New York academy of Art, the Art Students League of New York, and FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology). My work has been exhibited extensively in New York and Maryland galleries, and in June of 2005 one of my paintings was exhibited at the Metropolitan museum of Art in New York. My work is collected throughout the United States, Europe, Morocco, Canada, and the Caribbean. My work is also in the library of Congress, the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, AK, the Ministry of Culture in Bucharest, Romania, the Museul de Art in Cluz-Napoca, Romania, Royal Collection of Morocco, and the royal collection of HRM King of Greece. I have been published in NYArt magazine, Boheme magazine, Paris, France, Brooklyn Fine Art magazine, and various newspapers such as Caribbean News, The Brooklyn Eagle and the Brooklyn Currier. I have participated in art camps for cultural exchanges in Morocco and Romania. Important portraits that I have painted are for actors Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis, fashion designer Valentino Garavani, US Senator Roland Borris, His Majesty, Mohammed VI King of Morocco,  HRH King Constantine of Greece,  Fidel Castro of Cuba, and Harry Belafonte.