Devin Leonardi
Missoula Art Museum
In 2014, Philipsburg-based artist
Devin Leonardi tragically died. To honor his passing and share his artistic
vision, MAM has worked closely with Altman Siegel Gallery in San Francisco and
the artist’s family to present this selection of paintings.
Leonardi deftly uses 19th century
photography as source material for his haunting landscape paintings. He
investigates the complex relationship between painting and photography, a
medium that came to prominence during modernity and challenged painting’s
supremacy. By editing and re-presenting historical photographs, Leonardi
interprets our collective record and comments on modernity as a causal force in
the nation’s burgeoning expansion.
His atmospheric paintings elicit
the precise aesthetic and illustrative realism of Thomas Eakins, Norman
Rockwell, and Maxfield Parrish, and like these influences, revel in bucolic
idealism. He positions historical subjects, however, as allegories and parables
against anonymous western tropes to present a past that isn’t lost, but
manifests as contemporary anxiety and fears of the changing future.