The Westport Art Center’s next exhibit is “Leonard Everett Fisher: A Retrospective” featuring one of Westport’s most revered practicing artists, now at age 90.
“Leonard Everett Fisher: A Retrospective” opens at the Westport Arts Center on Friday, March 27 with a 6 to 8 p.m. reception. Fisher is holding a photo of himself as a youngster. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Photo by Helen Klisser During
It opens Friday, March 27 with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. and runs through April 25.
The collection reflects Fisher’s ability to blur the lines between design, illustration and art, and reveals the long-lasting impact that he has made in his lifetime, according to Helen Klisser During, WAC’s artistic director who curated the exhibit.
The retrospective includes 48 paintings, drawings, and illustrations from Fisher’s prolific 70-year career, during which he designed 10 U.S. postage stamps. The exhibition will range from his earliest drawings to his latest works.
Fisher comes from a family of four generations that shared an artistic flair, but is the first of his family to have become a professional “picture maker.” He attributes his love for storytelling to his mother, who read him encyclopedia excerpts in elementary school.
His parents were supportive of his art and encouraged him to pursue painting and design; they gave him a “studio” in the front hall closet of their Bronx apartment after he dipped his father’s paintbrush in India ink and destroyed his father’s watercolor painting.
Leonard Everett Fisher, “The Opening,” 1947, oil on canvas. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Contributed photo
Born in the Bronx, N.Y. in 1924, he was raised in the Sea Gate section of Brooklyn, he began his formal art training with his Brooklyn-born father, Benjamin M. Fisher, a designer of naval vessels, who contributed to the construction of Simon Lake submarines in Bridgeport, and such U.S. Navy fighting ships as the USS Arizona, USS Honolulu, and the USS North Carolina.
Although Fisher has been highly recognized for his artistic accomplishments, it is only recently that he truly considered himself an artist.
“I always viewed myself as a craftsman working on commissions, putting my own stamp on them,” he said. He says painting is his passion, and at times has spent 16 hours a day on his craft.
Fisher acknowledges that his wife of 62 years, Margery, has been his greatest influence, and believes several life experiences had significant impact on his success.
“One factor was being born to the right parents,” he said. “Second was coming out of the war alive. Meeting my wife and getting married is number three, and fourth is having the best kids (and their spouses) and grandchildren in the world.”
Fisher was honored in 2013 as grand marshal of Westport’s Memorial Day parade. (See text of his Memorial Day address here.)
In World War II, he servied at home, North Africa and Hawaii with the 30th Topographic Engineers as a photogrammetrist – someone who makes topographical maps from aerial photographs.
Leonard Everett Fisher addresses the 2013 Westport Memorial Day ceremony when he was grand marshal. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Lynn U. Miller for WestportNow.com
A noncommissioned officer,he was assigned to the 30th Engineers Battalion Operations. He participated in secret missions creating vital ground, dead reckoning, sea and navigational maps.
He later attended Yale University’s School of Art, earned BFA and MFA degrees (1949, 1950), was a recipient of Yale’s Winchester Fellowship and John Ferguson Weir Prize, and taught Design Theory as a Yale graduate teaching fellow.
His prewar art studies (1932-1942) began at the Heckscher Foundation (NYC), and continued with Moses Soyer (New Art School, NYC); Reginal Marsh (Art Students League, NYC); Olindo Ricci and Serge Chermayeff (Brooklyn College, NYC). He served as the Dean of the Whitney School of Art, and was at the time the youngest academic officer in America.
Fisher has illustrated some 250 books for young readers (1955-2007), authoring 88 of these, a number of which appear in a dozen or more languages.
He has designed 10 U.S. postage stamps and has executed paintings for the Norwalk Transit District building. He has also served as the president of the Westport Public Library board.
Some of his works have baseball themes. Explaining his love of baseball, he said, “I was born with a baseball in my mouth.”
His numerous honors include a Pulitzer painting award, the Premio Grafico Fiera Internazionale di Bologna, the Medallion of the University of Southern Mississippi, the Christopher Media for Illustration, a National Jewish Book Award, the Regina Medal of the Catholic Library Association, the University of Minnesota’s Kerlan Award, the American Library Association’s Arbuthnot citation, and the New England Booksellers Association Children’s Literature Award.
This 1974 U.S. postage stamp is one of 10 drawn by Leonard Everett Fisher. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Contributed photo
His art is in collections of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Postal History, the Butler Art Institute, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Museum of American Illustration, the Housatonic Museum of Art, Mt. Holyoke and Union Colleges, the Universities of Connecticut, Brown, Oregon, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Appalachia State, and Southern Mississippi, New York and Westport Public Libraries, among others.
Fisher’s art has been seen at the Chicago Art Institute, the Brandywine River Museum, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and other venues nationwide.
His work, “Coney Island, 1949,” is currently on view as part of the “Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861 – 2008” exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art through May 31. (See WestportNow Feb. 11, 2015)
