Leon Kroll
Leon Kroll was an American painter and lithographer. A figurative artist described by Life magazine as "the dean of U.S. nude painters", he was also a landscape painter and also produced an exceptional body of still life compositions. His public art includes murals for the Department of Justice Building in Washington, D.C. He created his only mosaic for the chapel ceiling at Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial.Biography
Leon Kroll was born into a musical family on lower Second Avenue in New York City. His father was a violinist, and his cousin was composer William Kroll. He studied at the Art Students League of New York under John Henry Twachtman, and at the Académie Julian in Paris with Jean Paul Laurens in the late 1800s.
In 1913 Kroll showed work at the Armory Show.
In addition to his own work, Kroll taught at the Art Students League of New York and the school of the National Academy of Design, where he had his first solo exhibition in 1910, was named as Associate in 1920 and as full Academician in 1927. In 1930, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was also named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1950. Kroll died in Gloucester, Massachusetts aged 89.
Artist-writer Jerome Myers in his autobiography Artist In Manhattan said:Work
Among Kroll's major public works are murals at these locations:
- Department of Justice Building, 1935
- Worcester Memorial Auditorium, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1938–1942
- Senate chamber murals for the Indiana Statehouse, with farm figures described by critics as "Bolsheviks", 1952
- Shriver Hall at Johns Hopkins University, circa 1953
- Normandy American Cemetery near Colleville-sur-Mer, France, 1953, his only mosaic
