Decades of Praise
1973John Russell: In a rackety, opportunistic world, the painter is rare who, like Leonardi, operates just this side of invisibility…to produce works of wonderment.
1998Lyle Rexer: [These are] the best works by Leonardi that I’ve seen, passionate and subtle, deliberate in their contradictions, confident in their quotations of others, capable not just of dazzling…but of opening perspectives on just about everything.
2001Donald Kuspit: A master of the tension between geometrical form and formless gesture…A passionate epiphany of feeling creating an aesthetic paradise where he has found an abstract utopia.
2003John Yau: It is this commingling of beauty and tragedy, phantasmal color and fragmented forms, that elevated Leonardi’s art, makes the paintings more than just a pleasure to look at. This finally is what distinguishes art from decoration. One exists on the periphery of our lives. The other stares back at us.