MANSO, LEO

MANSO, LEO (1914–1993), U.S. painter and educator. Manso trained at the National Academy of Design, New York City, from 1930 to 1934, the Educational Alliance, and the New School for Social Research. He taught at Cooper Union, Columbia University from 1950 to 1955, and New York University. Working as a book illustrator early in his career, Manso took the position of art director at World Publishing in New York, and in 1943, worked for Simon … Schuster illustrating book covers. He made his summer studio and home in Provincetown, Mass., in 1947 and assisted in the organization of Gallery 256, the period's first regional artists' cooperative. Manso's early work reflects the influence of Abstract Expressionism: he exhibited with the American Abstract Artists, whose members included Josef Albers and Ben Nicholson. Describing himself as an "Abstract Impressionist," Manso's light-suffused art of this period testifies to his study of the Impressionists, especially Claude Monet, as well as such painters as J.M.W. Turner and Sung artists. Manso stated that his work possessed two themes: a concern with landscape and an endeavor to find a visual equivalence for certain philosophical ideals. His work developed from landscapes with rapid, thick, expressive brushwork in an Abstract Expressionist vein, such as Bay/Dusk (1954) and Grey Sun (1957) to more serene images composed of related planes of tone. Manso's collages, such as Tanka III (1968) are small and intimate, owing a debt to the artist's study of quattracento Italian artists and to the collages of his friend and contemporary Robert Motherwell. To study the expressive qualities of color, Manso studied Persian miniatures, Romanesque and Etruscan art, and such modern artists as Paul Klee and Pierre Bonnard. Manso traveled widely: to Mexico in 1945, where he met the artists Jose Clemente Orozco and Rufino Tamayo, to Maine the following year, to Haiti in 1958, to India, Nepal, and Africa in the early 1970s, to Italy in 1975, and again to Rome in 1980 and 1981. In 1979–80, he was artist-in-residence at the Accademia Americao, Prix-de-Rome. Manso experimented with the use of simple geometric forms, making circular supports, as in his Vista I (Valley of Katmandu) (1974), or contained large triangles within the rectangular format of the canvas or paper. The title of a 1984 collage, Firenze, refers explicitly to the artist's beloved Italy. The composition features tones of russet, ocher, and lavender in overlapping planes of delicate texture further enunciated by the inclusion of a handwritten letter and envelope dated 1846. Manso counted among his friends the artists Milton Avery, Jacques Lipschitz, and Kurt Seligmann. Manso participated in many group and solo shows since 1946: in New York City; Rome; Provincetown, Massachusetts; Washington, D.C.; the San Francisco Museum; and the Museum of Modern Art, among other venues. His work is owned by private collectors and by many museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Whitney Museum, the Hirschhorn Museum, and the Glicenstein Museum, Safed, Israel. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Leo Manso: A Retrospective of Four Decades 1952–1992, Oct. 4–Oct. 23, 1992, Art Students League of New York (1992); Leo Manso, Assemblage: Feb. 8–Mar. 5, 1966, Rose Fried Gallery (1966). (Nancy Buchwald (2nd ed.)