Subverting Expectations:
the art of Alfred Leslie

For the past 50 years, Alfred Leslie (born in 1927), has been an authentic presence in American art. As a painter he has been known as the artist -- that younger member of the take-command generation of abstract expressionist painters -- who broke the ice for a renewed and refurbished practice of figurative based art with his multi-horizoned and confrontational Grisaille paintings and Notan landscapes of the early 1960's. In the late 1960's he would expand his vision to include narrative elements, laying pathways for his and later artists psychologically intense art-works dealing with themes of death and sexuality.