LeRoy Neiman Named Sport Artist of the Year
American Sport Art Museum & Archives Art Committee member Kay Daughdrill (l) and United States Sports Academy President Dr. Thomas P. Rosandich (r) present LeRoy Neiman with the Sport Artist of the Year award.
Legendary artist LeRoy Neiman has been named Sports Artist of the Year 2007 by the American Sport Art Museum and Archives (ASAMA), a division of the United States Sports Academy (Academy). Academy President Dr. Thomas P. Rosandich presented the award to Neiman at an invitation only event on September 18 at the Hammer Galleries in New York City.
Neiman is best known for his images of sport and leisure activities and considered one of the most popular living artists in the United States.
His ability to portray sport action quickly through a variety of mediums has allowed his work to be shown on Olympic telecasts, where he created “on the spot” images on television during the 1972 Summer Games in Munich and drew a mural live in the studio background during ABC’s telecast of the 1976 Games in Montreal. His role in pop culture spanned for decades, creating works for Playboy magazine since its inception in 1954 and having two of his works displayed prominently in the 1982 film Rocky III. He also appeared as a ring announcer in three of the Rocky movies.
Like many Rocky sequels, Neiman’s work was a media and pop culture darling. His illustrations for a short story in Playboy, “Black Country” in 1954 earned the magazine an award from the Chicago Art Director’s Club.
Like ASAMA, Neiman found a niche in sport art that was untouched and pioneered the genre with great enthusiasm.
“For an artist, watching a (Joe) Namath throw a football or Willie Mays hit a baseball is an experience far more overpowering than painting a beautiful woman or leading political figure,” Neiman once said. “Concentrating on sports has helped me because I couldn’t refer back to past movements. There hasn’t been any sports art to speak of. . . .I’ve had the field pretty much to myself.”
A member of the New York City Advisory Commission for Cultural Affairs since 1995, Neiman has had hundreds of works appear in nine books and has produced at least eight limited-edition serigraphs (silkscreen prints) every year since 1971 to be distributed and sold in selected galleries. He has received four honorary degrees and, among others, an Award of Merit from the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), a Gold Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
The Sport Artist of the Year award has been presented by ASAMA since 1984 as part of the Academy’s Awards of Sport program, honoring the artist and the athlete.
Past recipients of the Sports Artist of the Year include Hans Erni, Charles Billich, Ernie Barnes, and Mina Papatheodorou-Valyraki. To learn more about the Sport Artist of the Year, please visit http://www.asama.org/awards/sportartists.
ASAMA houses what is believed to be the largest collection of fine sport art in the world and is dedicated to the collection, display and preservation of sports history, art and literature. The museum exhibits world-renowned sport artists Erni, Billich, Ernie Barnes and the famed Spanish artist Cristóbal Gabarrón.
Since its inception, ASAMA has recognized the importance of the cultural connectivity of athletic competition and artistic expression. The tradition of artistically rendering the human expression that is sport provides the focus for ASAMA. This is embodied by the Sport Artist of the Year. The award is presented annually to an individual who captures the spirit and life of sport so that future generations can relive the drama of today's competition. Recipients have used a variety of art media including oil and canvas, photography, illustrations, sculpture, assemblage and more to depict the breadth and scope of both the agony and ecstasy in sport.
