Leroy Walter FLINT
1909–1991, USA

One of Ohio's finest painters and printmakers of the twentieth century, W. Leroy Flint attended the Cleveland School of Art from 1932 to 1936. After graduation he worked for the Cleveland Chapter of the Works Progress Administration and completed commissioned murals, etchings, aquatints, lithographs and adult education projects. Along with Kalman Kubinyi, Russell Limbach, Frank Fousek and others, Leroy Flint produced many fine works of graphic art for the Cleveland W.P.A., Leroy Flint's art at this time was mainly realistic and sometimes regionalist. Satire and social commentary figured prominently. By 1940 he had become the executive secretary of the Cleveland Artist's Union and a member of the American Artists' Congress. When the United States entered the Second World War, William Leroy Flint accepted the post of senior instructor in the map reproduction department of the Army Corps of Engineering at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. After the war, he worked three years (1946-1949) as director for the Cleveland City Planning Commission. William Flint then taught art first at the Cleveland Museum of Art and then became both curator and director of the Akron Art Institute. In 1965 he left this post to become professor of art at Kent State University. After 1945 Leroy Flint began to experiment with abstract forms in art. By 1950 his paintings and drawings concentrated upon explorations of lyrical forms and rhythms far removed from his figurative, satirical art of the 1930's. Yet he proved to be as much a master of abstraction as of representational art. Wave is a superb example of Flint's later, modernist techniques. Building his composition in rapidly moving lines of whites and browns he brilliantly depicts both the power and beauty of a wave crashing against rocks. Only a most accomplished artist could create such telling imagery with such spontaneity. During his career W. Leroy Flint exhibited his art regularly in Cleveland, Akron, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Chicago. Today examples of his work are included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian, Washington, DC, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Akron Art Institute and the University of Michigan. - artoftheprint.com

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