Volume 74, Number 16 | August 18 – 24 , 2004
Obituary
Leon Golub, a political painter, 82
Leon Golub, a painter who lived and worked in the Village for the past 40 years and whose gritty heroic figures reflected his commitment to radical politics, died Aug. 8 of complications after surgery at the age of 82.
A native of Chicago, he earned a degree from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1950 and married a fellow artist, Nancy Spero, in 1951. They moved to the Village in 1964 after a five-year stay in Paris and had adjoining studios on LaGuardia Pl.
His work is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and the Tate Gallery in London. Recent surveys of his painting were shown by the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Brooklyn Museum, New Museum for Contemporary Art in Soho and the Bucknell Art Gallery at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.
In addition to his wife, three sons also survive, Stephen, of Swarthmore, Pa., and Philip and Paul, of Paris.
A memorial is tentatively planned for October with a specific time and place to be announced later.
