artists

LEO VALLEDOR (1936-1989)
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Leo Valledor was born and raised in the Fillmore district of San Francisco. He was at the vanguard of the minimalist painting movement in the mid 1970s, and a member of the influential Park Place Group in SoHo. Art critics have placed his work in the league of Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman, and Leon Polk Smith. In a recent catalog essay about Valledor’s work, curator Lawrence Rinder said, “Abandoning the gestural language of abstract expressionism (which would linger in the Bay Area for decades), Valledor started to explore reduced palettes, geometric shapes, and the spatial dimension of color.” Valledor’s work explores the juxtapositions of colors and geometric forms as metaphors for the interplay of elements in the natural world. Valledor studied art at the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute), and went on to teach at his alma mater and at U.C. Berkeley. His work is in the collection of the De Young Museum, Oakland Museum, Seattle Museum, Philadelphia Museum, Crocker Museum, and Allentown Museum.

Reviews/Essays/Articles
Lawrence Rinder, Everything Pellucid: The Paintings of Leo Valledor, pp 1, 2