Iria Leino at Larsen Warner

Larsen / Warner will take up temporary residence at the renowned gallery space at Hudiksvallsgatan 8 that was previously home to Galerie Nordenhake, with a solo exhibition from the Esate of Finnish born artist Iria Leino (b. (b.1932, Helsinki – d. 2022, NYC).  On the morning of Saturday — May 17th, from 10.00 – 12.00 Larsen/Warner invite guests to art and breakfast.

At the peak of her success in 1964, she suddenly abandoned her modeling career and settled in a gritty SoHo loft among New York City’s bohemian community. In New York Leino began to cultivate her distinctive language of abstraction at The Art Students League under the guidance of the legendary Larry Poons. She juxtaposed brilliant primary colours in dynamic arrangements within her deeply gestural practice, responding to the charged compositions produced by the first generation of Abstract Expressionists. Favouring the contemplative nature of pure colour and its sensuous immediacy over the spontaneous intensity of gestural abstraction, Leino dedicated several years to developing dozens of immersive colour field and lyrically abstract paintings.

Our duo presentations in Stockholm highlight some of the most extraordinary examples from this period of creative innovation. In her lifetime, Leino rarely engaged with the gallery system, the artist instead opted for an existence devoted to her studio practice and her faith in Buddhism, and much like pioneering artists such as Hilma af Klint, saw her work as a means of spiritual enlightenment rather than a purely commercial endeavour. Our duo presentations highlight the first two series that sparked her lifelong exploration of acrylic paint’s viscosity across a range of styles: the Colour Field and Buddhist Rain series and pay homage to this undiscovered painter; shedding light on her incisive contributions to the history of postwar abstraction.