Leonardo Drew American, b. 1961

Drew was born in 1961 in Tallahassee, Florida, and grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Memories of his childhood surroundings—from the housing project where he lived to the adjacent landfill—resurface in the intricate grids and configurations of many of his pieces.  Although often mistaken for accumulations of found objects, his sculptures are instead made of “brand new stuff”—materials such as wood, rusted iron, cotton, paper, and mud—that he intentionally subjects to processes of weathering, burning, oxidation, and decay. During his early childhood, Drew often found himself there mining through and creating works from discarded remnants, giving them new meaning. Drew recalls, “I remember all of it, the seagulls, the summer smells, the underground fires that could not be put out… and over time I came to realize this place as ‘God’s mouth’…the beginning and the end…and the beginning again… Though I do not use found objects in my work (my materials are  fabricated in the studio) what has remained from my early explorations are the echoes of evolution…life, death, regeneration.”

Leonardo Drew attended Parsons School of Design, and received a BFA from Cooper Union (1985). Whether jutting out from a wall or traversing rooms as  freestanding installations, his pieces challenge the architecture of the space in  which they’re shown. Never content with work that comes easily, Drew  constantly  reaches beyond “what’s comfortable” and charts a course of daily  investigation, never knowing what the work will be about but letting it find its  way, and asking, “What if….”.

Drew's works have been shown internationally and are included in numerous  public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;  Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garde Washington,  D.C.; and Tate, London.  Drew was commissioned for a new outdoor project  City in the Grass for Madison Square Park in summer 2019, marking the  Madison  Square Park Conservancy's 38th public commission and the artist's first  major public outdoor art project. City in the Grass was presented as a solo  exhibition in three museums, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art,  Hartford,  Connecticut (2021); Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson (2020); and  North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (2020). Other solo exhibitions include Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California (2020); University of Massachusetts Amherst (2019); de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, California (2017); Palazzo Delle Papesse, Centro Arte Contemporanea, Siena, Italy (2006);  and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington,  D.C. (2000).

Drew's mid-career survey, Existed, premiered at the Blaffer Gallery  at the University of Houston in 2009, and traveled to the Weatherspoon Art  Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, and the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Recently, Drew was commissioned for two major site-responsive works permanently  installed at San Francisco International Airport, Harvey Milk Terminal 1, and at  the Facebook Headquarters, Menlo Park, California respectively. In 2022, Drew  was elected as a National Academician by the National Academy of Design. 

Drew currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.