Leonard Creo Biography
Leonard Creo (1923 - 2019) was born in New York City, raised in Hollis, took courses at the Art Students League, while working in advertising. Returning after World War II, Creo continued his artistic studies in New York. He spent the summer in Gloucester where he painted with Emile Gruppe. During the 1960s and 1970s, Creo's work was sold in nearly two dozen solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Rome, as well as other galleries around the world. In 2004, the New Britain Museum of Art exhibited one painting by Leon Creo in its collection, until acquiring 15 Creo paintings in 2006. Creo's work is in the permanent collections of the Washington Museum of Fine Arts, the New Britain Museum of American Art; Amherst College Museum, Georgia Museum of Fine Arts; Long Beach Museum of Fine Arts; Norfolk Museum of Art; Syracuse University Museum; Ulrich Museum; University of Maine; NYU, University of Wyoming Museum; Washington Museum of Fine Arts. His solo exhibitions include those at the Shayne Gallery, Montreal in 1981-82, 1985, 1989, and annually from 1991 to 2005 and 2007; seven at the Portal Gallery in London in the 1960s and 1970s, three at the Madden Gallery in London in the 1980s; ten at Carter Gallery, Los Angeles from 1959 to 1976; six at the ACA Gallery in New York and three at the ACA Gallery in Rome in the 1960s and 1970s; five at the Chase Gallery in New York in the 1950s and 1960s and three at the Margutta Gallery.