\"Pop Artist\" LeRoy Neiman Signed 5x7 Mark McGwire Color Card For Sale

Up for sale "Pop Artist" LeRoy Neiman Signed 5x7 Mark McGwire Color Card. 

known for his brilliantly colored, expressionist paintings and screenprints of athletes, musicians, and sporting events.

Neiman was born in 1921 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the son of Lydia Sophia (née

Serline), of Braham, Minnesota, and

Charles Julius Runquist, who were married in 1918 and lived in Grasston, Minnesota (Kanabec

County). He was of Turkish and Swedish descent ("as near as I can figure out",

as he has said). His father deserted his family, and when his mother

married his stepfather, John L. Niman (Neiman) in 1926, LeRoy changed to the

new surname as well. His mother divorced Neiman about 1935, and married for the

third time in about 1940, to Ernst G. Hoelscher, of St. Paul. She died in St.

Paul on November 14, 1985, aged 87. LeRoy was raised in the

Macalester-Groveland and Frogtown neighborhoods of St. Paul. The home he lived

in the longest, from about 1940 to about 1955, still stands at 569 Van Buren

Avenue. Neiman served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He worked as a cook until the end of the war,

when his art skills were recognized and put to use painting sets for Red Cross shows. Following his return in 1946, Neiman

studied briefly at the St. Paul School of Art,

then at the School of

The Art Institute of Chicago on the G.I. Bill. After graduating, Neiman served on the Art

Institute faculty for ten years. During the time Neiman was teaching, he was

exhibiting art in competitions and winning prizes. In 1954, Neiman began his

association with Playboy magazine. Neiman had

met Hugh Hefner while doing freelance fashion illustration

for the Carson Pirie Scott department

store chain, where Hefner was a writer. Hefner and Playboy art

director Art Paul commissioned an illustration for the magazine's

fifth edition. Hefner told Sports Illustrated,

"I don't remember the moment. Our eyes did not meet across a crowded

room." One day, after Hefner had started his magazine, he ran into Neiman

on a street and asked him to become a contributor to Playboy.[4] Among Neiman's contributions over the next 50

years, he created the Femlin character for the Party Jokes

page, and did a feature for 15 years titled "Man at His Leisure",

where Neiman would paint illustrations of his travels to exotic locations. Beginning

in 1960, he traveled the world observing and painting leisure life, social activities

and athletic competitions including the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Kentucky Derby, championship boxing, PGA and The Masters golf tournament, The Ryder Cup, the World Equestrian Games, Wimbledon and

other Grand Slam competitions, as well as night life, entertainment, jazz and

the world of casino gambling. In 1970, Neiman did the illustration for the 5th Dimension's album Portrait. In

1998, he did all the illustrations for a special "Sports" issue

of The Nation magazine, for which he received the

magazine's standard fee of $150.

Neiman sponsored and supported several organizations from coast to coast

that foster art activities for underprivileged children such as The LeRoy

Neiman Center for Youth in San Francisco and the Arts Horizons LeRoy Neiman Art

Center in Harlem. He also has established facilities at various colleges,

including the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University in

New York and the LeRoy Neiman Campus Center at his alma mater, the School of

the Art Institute of Chicago. Neiman donated $5 million to the School of the

Art Institute, which funded the construction of the Neiman Center at the

School.

He received five honorary doctorates and numerous awards, a lifetime

achievement award from the University of Southern

California, an induction into the International Boxing Hall

of Fame, and proclamations and citations. He received The Order of

Lincoln award (the State's highest honor) on the 200th birthday celebration of

Abraham Lincoln given by the Governor of Illinois in 2009. He authored twelve books of his art. A

documentary on his jazz painting, The Big Band, had its world

premiere in Los Angeles in February, 2009. Neiman produced about a year, generally

priced from $3,000 to $6,000 each. Gross annual sales of new serigraphs alone

topped $10 million. Originals can sell for up to $500,000 for works such

as Stretch Stampede, a mammoth 1975 oil painting of the Kentucky Derby. In addition to being a renowned sports artist,

Neiman has created many works from his experience on safari, including Portrait of a Black Panther, Portrait

of the Elephant, Resting Lion, and Resting Tiger.

Some of his other subjects include sailing, cuisine, golf, boxing, horses,

celebrities, famous locations, and America at play. Much of his work was done

for Playboy magazine, for which he still illustrated

monthly until his death. Neiman worked in oil, enamel, watercolor, pencil

drawings, pastels, serigraphy and some lithographs and etching. Neiman was

listed in Art Collector's Almanac, Who's Who in the East, Who's

Who in American Art, Who's Who in America, and Who's

Who in the World. He was a member of the Chicago Society of Artists.

His works have been displayed in museums, sold at sales, and displayed in

galleries and online distributors. He is considered by many to be the first

major sports artist in the world, challenged only in his later years by a new

generation of artists like Stephen Holland and Richard T. Slone. His work is in the permanent collection of

the Smithsonian, the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in

Boston, the State Hermitage Museum in

Russia, Wadham College at

Oxford and in museums and art galleries the world over, as well as in private

and corporate collections.