Lee Waisler

Lee Waisler (born February 25, 1938) is an American painter and printmaker based in Los Angeles. such as the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. His current work includes portraits of celebrities and historical figures. His work is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, National Gallery of Modern Art, among others.

Early life Lee Waisler was born on February 25, 1938, in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, to a politically progressive Jewish family. Growing up in nearby West Hollywood, Waisler was surrounded by the movie business and those aspiring to be in it, which, Waisler says, came to be an important part of his development. Waisler attended the Hollywood Academy of Arts from the age of seven. At the time Waisler was growing up, the Abstract expressionism movement was gaining popularity. Waisler became interested in abstraction and was influenced by artists like Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still.

Early work Waisler's first solo show took place at the Ryder Gallery in Los Angeles in 1968. Waisler exhibited a series of figurative color etching. Much of the work Waisler produced in his early career was socially and politically charged, relating to the Holocaust, civil rights, the Vietnam War, and the anti-nuclear cause.

Waisler uses a variety of materials, both in paintings and sculpture, that double as representative symbols. Wood, a recurring element in Waisler's paintings, symbolizes life and shelter. Sand is used to represent time, various forms of Earth to represent power, and various forms of carbon to represent life. Waisler has also used ash and stone in his Holocaust memorials. The materials serve both symbolic and formal purposes. Waisler often layers multiple materials with paint to create high-impasto surfaces on his works, adding to other formal properties. Additionally, Waisler uses light-reflective materials and paints to explore the symbolism of light with the belief that life is transferred by light.

New Delhi In 1996 Waisler was invited to exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New Delhi. In 1998, Waisler spent 4 months in India producing the work for the exhibition. In order to avoid the effect of a colonial installation, Waisler produced all the work in India so as to reflect Indian culture and philosophy in both theme and materials. A central theme of the works from this period was Mandala imagery and the meditative response that it evokes. Waisler also produced an anti-colonialist sculpture called "IMF Lifesaver", a large life-saver shape made of barbed wire. The Mandala symbol continued as a recurring theme in Waisler paintings after the exhibition.

Current work In the early 2000s, Waisler began to paint portraits of people which has continued to the present day. Some figures painted include Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Paul Celan, Virginia Woolf, Aung San Suu Kyi, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Ethel Rosenberg. Waisler also continues to produce other figurative and abstract works and sculptures and exhibit worldwide.