Provenance: Graham Gallery, New York

ABOUT THE WORK

LEO VALLEDOR HIGH PRIEST OF NEW YORK COOL by LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL Leo Corpuz Valledor was a key figure in the New York art scene of the 1960s. Valledor could easily have been a character straight out of the mystery-thriller about California life, L.A. Confidential. His mother ran card games out of her house and would eventually be shot (and subsequently die) for her trouble. His father, on the other hand, “followed the crops up and down the coast” but whose primary occupation was being “a playboy.” That father would disappear for long spells, finally abandoning his family for good when Leo was just a child. Valledor would thus be orphaned at age 12 and would essentially raise himself. The San Francisco where Leo grew up was in the Fillmore district which was seething with jive and jazz clubs. In a series of interviews for the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution, his cousin and fellow artist Carlos Villa, would describe their neighborhood as “a ghetto within another ghetto within a metropolis.” The Filipinos of the area belonged to an association called the Native Sons of Lapog. Lapog was a small town in Ilocos Sur, the Philippine province from where many of the first wave of migrants came. By all accounts, Valledor had a fractured background, an Asian heritage that had an uncanny command of the English language and a grasp of stateside culture, thanks to his parents’ American colonial teachers. Additionally, he would have a coming of age in an atmosphere of African-American zootsuits and the lifestyle of the Mexican rasquache (or low-rider culture.) “He was pretty much by himself,” exclaimed Villa. “And yet, at about 16 and 17 years old, he was doing these paintings in his house that were ten-by-ten-foot abstract paintings.” Valledor would get by thanks to the idea of the Filipino extended family, possibly renting out rooms in the house he inherited to the fleet of uncles and manongs (the Ilocano term for an older male) who would arrive “fresh off the boat.” Valledor would receive a scholarship for the California School of Fine Arts—which opened an entirely new world for him and would eventually lead him to New York City. He would declare that he had fallen in love with abstract art. In the authoritative Reimagining Space : The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York, Linda Dalrymple Henderson would write, “To understand the history of a gallery as unprecedented as Park Place, one must look first at California, where the majority of its members attended art school and met each other. Valledor was a key piece in the puzzle. As a founding member of the Park Place group, he brought with him his formative experiences in the melting-pot “ghettoes” of San Francisco’s Fillmore, where he would be imprinted with an atmosphere of art, painting, poetry, and music. This was further reinforced by the communal nature not just of the Six Gallery but also of his Filipino background. Park Place would become an address from which alliances and creativity would flow. Villa would remember, “Park Place was a loft building down in Tribeca, and it was on one of the streets that one of the Twin Towers was built. And at Park Place, they had a $35 a month rent , So I had a loft as soon as I got there to New York. I was connected.” Valledor was thoroughly well-connected in an age brimming with possibilities in the civil rights movement and the space race. Martin Luther King would give his “I Have A Dream” speech in the 1963 March on Washington; a man would be on the moon by 1969. The Park Place shows attracted attention almost as soon as the space opened. Its exhibitions featured paintings and sculpture together, revolutionizing the way that new, avant-garde artists could present their art in marked contrast to the more conservative Madison Avenue galleries. Its cavernous spaces invited the creation of large works and interactions with sculpture, music, and the spoken word. Park Place became a significant part of the New York art scene until the late 1960s, putting a face on the city’s art scene for young artists and leading the move to Soho as a center for happenings that would in turn become the lightning rod for a whole new scene. It made art blisteringly cool. Paula Cooper, who would go on to establish her own gallery, was its second director. Valledor would eventually return to his native California where he would continue to produce his avant-garde art. Five of Leo Valledor’s works are in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). In 2019, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York acquired two paintings by Leo Valledor for its permanent collection: Odelight and Serena, both from the year 1964, both acrylic on canvas and each measuring 35 15/16 × LEFT PAGE: Leo Valledor with his diptych, Echo (for John Coltrane). THIS PAGE: (1) Leo Valledor, For M, 1966, 20 in. x 120 in (50.8 × 304.8 cm), acrylic on canvas is in the permanent collection of the SF Moma. (2) Leo Valledor with his diptych, Echo (for John Coltrane). Leo Valledor, For M, 1966, 20 in. x 120 in (50.8 × 304.8 cm), acrylic on canvas is in the permanent collection of the SF Moma. 109 ½ inches. They were a generous gift from Valledor’s fellow Park Place founder, the sculptor Mark di Suvero. Leo Valledor is regarded as a pioneer of the MInimalism movement that would dominate the American artistic landscape throughout the 1970s.