A man sits on a round divan in the Water Lilies room of the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris. He’s silent, contemplative. He turns slowly, deliberately, never shifting his gaze. The paintings surround him, almost envelope him. He’s still silent. Then he turns and says, “Looking at these beautiful paintings is as peaceful as sitting in a garden.”
Todd Lehman in His Studio.
Thus it was in 1972 at the age of thirty-one, Todd Lehman decided to become a painter. We had been traveling in Europe for nearly five months searching for a new life, a new way of defining a meaningful existence for ourselves: he, weary of an unsatisfying journalism career; I, looking for a new and different artistic outlet, following a back injury that ended my life as a Broadway dancer.
That evening we delineated our future paths in a four-franc-a-day room at the Hôtel de Vieux Paris on the Rue Git-Le-Coeur. Significantly, the hotel bore the nickname the “Beat Hotel,” after Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Gregory Corso made it their Paris retreat in the 1950s. We faced the obvious, that we had to return to school—he to art school, I to music school. Our lack of fluency in foreign languages forced us to return to New York for our reeducation. Todd enrolled at the Art Students League, studying drawing and painting with the highly regarded post-depression muralist, Edward Laning, who shortly after made him his monitor, a kind of teaching assistant.
I first met Todd in September 1968, in a performance studio, where I was in rehearsal for the Broadway production of Celebration by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt of The Fantasticks fame. Todd was then working on costumes and lighting. Within two months, he was promoted to assistant to producer Cheryl Crawford, whose previous productions included Brigadoon, Porgy and Bess, and several Tennessee Williams plays. This was his first tentative attempt to escape the life of a journalist. By January 1969, we began a relationship, which was to last one month short of fifty-one years. When the show closed in May of that year, Todd lost his job and was forced to return to publishing.
Born in Millersburg, Pennsylvania, Todd excelled as a student and showed promise in his art classes. He dreamt of becoming a concert pianist and conductor but felt he lacked the necessary talent to follow that dream. He attended Oklahoma State University and Penn State, where he pursued a Master’s Degree in journalism. During college he worked for United Press International, where he turned news flashes into readable scripts for radio and TV broadcasters. In New York, he became an editor for several trade magazines, as well as for Collier’s Encyclopedia.
His first attempts at painting were figurative and incorporated the Renaissance techniques that he had learned under Laning’s guidance.
Three Old Men.
These were followed by landscapes much in the style of Turner, paintings that led to his first one-person show in New York. As he developed, the landscapes became increasingly abstract until he finally abandoned representational painting altogether. Still in his imitative phase, his works were very much like de Kooning’s. He had no patience for young artists who believed that studying the works and techniques of the masters would stifle their creativity.
To view Todd’s extensive output on Gallery Go by Google Photos,
click here.
Janice Lee and Stuart Shapiro, ardent supporters of both Todd’s painting and my musical compositions, became the modern-day version of the Medicis for us. They bought numerous paintings from Todd, many of which were hung in Stuart’s law offices. Others were hung in their New York townhouse. One large painting, “Dorothy Parker’s Red Dress,” inspired by her poem, hung over the mantelpiece in the living room and could be seen from the street.
One afternoon Stu was outside his house when a woman approached him, “I see that you have a de Kooning in your living room that I don’t know, even though I’m a curator at the Museum of Modern Art.” “Would you care to come in and take a look?” “Yes, thank you.” The curator was admiring the work when Stu said, “Actually, the painting is not a de Kooning, but a Lehman.”
Although most artists are loath to admit it, their early work tends to be imitative. Rightly so, because what better way to learn than by imitating the geniuses. Not long after, Todd developed his own personal architectural style. He never abandoned the classic techniques that he learned in Laning’s classes, however.
He began with a rough drawing in pencil or charcoal. Then he brushed in an underpainting, which rendered a ground of color. Over this ground, he added many layers of nearly transparent glazes. At strategic places, he might wipe off some of the still-wet color with a rag or scrape some off, using various tools. This created a sort of pentimento effect, exposing some of the under layers and giving depth and dimension to the work. For me, the result brought to mind the unveiling of ancient archeological surfaces.
Nearly always he worked in oils because he felt that with acrylics he could not accomplish the effects he desired. He mixed his own paints, sometimes using raw pigments, giving his palette a wide spectrum of colors. Color was, in fact, his strongest suit. He had an innate sense of combining colors in the most complementary and aesthetically pleasing fashion. His reds, which spanned a plethora of hues, are among the most beautiful and varied I’ve ever seen.
A Panoply of Reds.
Occasionally, he worked monochromatically (generally black), but those paintings essentially reflected his sometimes sombre moods about the state of mankind, as in his Requiem for America series.
Requiem for America.
While he frequently worked on large canvases, he preferred the hard smooth surfaces of fine handmade papers, which he always primed with gesso to prevent the oil from the paints seeping through and degrading the paper. His form and composition were impeccable, with perfect balance and chiaroscuro that direct the eye precisely to his intended points of view. In much of his abstract work, he refused to sign the painting, except on the reverse side, so as not to distort the composition. For works that had areas of white space, he designed rubber stamps with his initials.
Kahlo and Lorca.
He loved experimenting with varying materials to add interesting and surprising textures to his work. Newspapers were a favorite, but always in a foreign language because he didn’t want to give any significance to the text.
Use of Newspaper.
He was particularly fond of gold and silver leaf, sometimes crinkling them. Watching the silver tarnish over a long period of time until it developed a variegated bronze-like patina delivered a delightful frisson for him.
Crinkled and Smooth Silver Leaf.
Several works, which he called his “horizon paintings” were inspired by a photograph of the crack of dawn he took from a plane at 30,000 feet.
Horizon.
Many of his textural experiments were applied to these horizon paintings. To give large fields of black a more matte finish and pebbly surface, he would add sand to the paint. Erosion cloth, which is generally used in building theatrical sets, was another texture-enhancing tool.
Erosion Cloth (Top). Sand (Bottom.)
He had a strong penchant for Asian art. Calligraphic gestures, particularly in the monochromatic works, were not uncommon. Sometimes bamboo poles were attached to the top of the canvas outside the visual areas, enhancing the quiet of his color-field paintings.
Bamboo Fastened to the Top.
Sometimes he combined textural elements in the horizon paintings, using metallic leaf, newspaper, color blocks, and collage.
Horizon with Silver Leaf, Newspaper, and Collage.
His inspiration came from poetry, travel experiences, and most significantly from music, both classical and jazz. I don’t ever recall him painting without music playing. He owned nearly 1,000 CDs. Todd was also a first-rate photographer, and he often used photos of our travels as catalysts for his paintings. In fact, in his last years, he was compiling photos of his beloved Sicily for a possible exhibition. Those photos, which frequently echoed the textures of his paintings, are best exemplified by this one of a street in the town of Erice.
Erice, Sicilia.
Titling the works was generally difficult for him. Often he left them untitled. Generally, when he used titles, they were affixed after the painting was completed. An exception to this was his series of Sicilian Sketches.
Sicilian Sketch 1.
Sicilian Sketch 2.
The chief representative of Todd’s work was the Otto-Galerie in Munich. He also exhibited at numerous New York City and Pennsylvania galleries. His show at a Georgetown gallery in Washington, D.C., led to the sale of fourteen paintings, hung in the Presidential Suite of the city’s newest Marriott Hotel. However, like most artists, he never received the recognition that his ineffably beautiful work deserved. Beauty, in point of fact, was something he wanted to bring to every piece he created. In a world where beauty no longer seems to have much agency, that may have worked against him.
Todd passed away just before Christmas 2019, after a two-year struggle with cancer. In our apartment, more than fifty of his finest paintings hang on the walls, creating a virtual gallery retrospective of his stunning work. One of his favorite paintings hangs over the sofa in our living room.
One of Todd’s Favorites.
In addition, he left hundreds of unframed paintings piled up in his studio or filed away in large portfolios. It is my hope that these unseen paintings will one day find homes where they can be appreciated by many more people.
I was so fortunate to have two of Todd’s paintings gracing my own work: one became the cover on a CD entitled Rapport, which included my Christina Rossetti song cycle; another served as the cover for publication of my sheet music—16 Jazz Ballads. Even more fortunate was I in knowing Todd for fifty-one years, by far the best years of my life. He was a man of great kindness, gentleness, generosity, and countless talents—you might say a Renaissance man for our time, an antiquated notion in this age of specialization.
His boundless curiosity kept him young and informed on so many subjects from history, to literature, art, music, theatre, and politics. The mere mention of something with which he was unfamiliar immediately led him to consult a book or later the internet to inform himself. As a result, I can’t remember a single moment where we lacked for for a topic to discuss together.
Todd’s passing has left an aching black hole in my being. And the world is a far poorer place without him.
To view a slide show of Todd Lehman’s work, click here.
To learn about his available paintings, use the email address on the Contact Page, and describe which works interest you.
