Leon Lank Leonard, Sr. was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and educator born in Waco, Texas. He studied at Texas College and the University of Denver School of Art, where he later taught in the School of Fine Arts for eighteen years. After serving in the armed forces during World War II, Leonard moved to Los Angeles and lived in the Watts community through the 1970s. A 1968 exhibition brochure noted that he had received more than twenty-five awards for his oil paintings, sculpture, and watercolors, and had exhibited in the United States and Europe.

Leonard worked across painting, sculpture, ceramics, and printmaking. In the portrait you shared, a dramatically tilted figure and angular contours emerge from a densely worked ground; pink, yellow, green, and black patterning gives the composition a vivid, almost kinetic energy. Leonard’s work appeared in exhibitions around the country from the 1950s through the 1970s, including the 1968 International Black Arts Exhibition in Los Angeles and the traveling exhibition Black American Artists ’71.