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June Leaf

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The official account for June Leaf (1929-2024), celebrating the artist’s work, her history, and her legacy.

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In early Spring 2021, June Leaf took a trip to the Springs, the hamlet in East Hampton, NY where she had a studio one summer in the mid-1960s. She wished to see it again. It was impossible to locate, things had changed in the half century since she had worked there.

A friend suggested they drive over to the @pollockkrasnerhouse which hadn’t changed. The house and studio of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock is open annually from May to October so it was too soon to go inside but the artist loved walking the grounds and admired the integrity of the buildings and the setting. Built in 1879, the house is a typical structure used by farmers and fishermen of the time period. It reminded the artist of the 1890s fisherman’s cabin she shared with Robert Frank in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and where six years after working in the house, she built a studio by hand in 1975.

#juneleaf @robertfrankfoundation @pollockkrasnerfoundation photo by @andrea_glimcher by @juneleafofficial

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June Leaf’s work takes center stage in the newly opened “The Bowery: Devil’s Mile” the first exhibition to trace the 400 year history and culture of New York’s oldest thoroughfare on view now @newmuseum curated by Lisa Phillips with assistance from Thalia Stefaniuk.

June Leaf gave birth to the idea for “The Head” (1980) in Nova Scotia. She nurtured it - in paintings, sculptures, and drawings - in her NYC studio just steps off the Bowery, and she fabricated this sculpture - with a crank that powers a bellows and gives its subject breath - at the Lippincott Foundry in Connecticut.

Thank you, New Museum, for honoring June Leaf, an artist with endless curiosity and capacity who shared your love and admiration for creation and for downtown NYC. by @juneleafofficial

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11 days ago

Happy August 4th Birthday to June Leaf (1929-2024) who spent over half a century living and working on Cape Breton, Nova Scotia when she wasn’t in New York City. “If you really want to know me and my work, you have to come up here and visit” was the great advice she shared with close friends. Photos: Brian Graham @andrea_glimcher @roversi @aliceattieart by @juneleafofficial

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2 months ago

“June Leaf: Shooting from The Heart” the first major traveling retrospective dedicated to the artist in over three decades concluded today.

It was an extraordinary presentation, as wise, warm, funny, surprising, inventive, and astonishing as the legendary artist herself was known.

Opening in 2025 @addisongalleryofamericanart , it traveled to the @nyugrey and then to the @allenartmuseum where it was on view beginning in January 2026.

Special thanks to the lead curators @gordonwilkins @allison_kem @erie_curator and @andrea_glimcher the artist’s manager and her team at Hyphen; thank you to early project supporters Andria Derstine, now @clevelandmuseumofart and Lynn Gumpert, formerly of the Grey, and to the countless museum professionals who contributed to every aspect of the organization of this retrospective; to @broadcove and @kara_walker_official for their @rizzolibooks catalogue essays; to the generous lenders and sponsors; and to the many writers who took time to consider and recognize the contributions of June Leaf (1929-2024) to art history.

“Thrillingly dynamic” @jilnotjill @nytimes

“An ideal moment to dwell in Leaf’s vision” @nicole_rudick @nyrbooks

“An indispensable survey” @galitny @financialtimes

“Theatrical and multidimensional” @osmancanyerebakan @wallpapermag

“(Her) freewheeling, expressionistic sculptures and frenetic drawings incorporating the female form inspired generations of feminist artists-the subject of an excellent exhibition.” @fifival @voguemagazine

“Bursting with warmth and charm” @murrayscottwhyte @bostonglobe

“A seismic retrospective...celebrates humans’ attempts to be greater than themselves through technology, performance, relationships, and art.” @imimshambles @bostonartreview

“Sheer inventiveness” Josh Niland @whitehotmagazine

“Dazzling virtuosity” @jfyfe342 @brooklynrail

“Inventive, genre-busting work” Diana Iskandarova @cultured

“A self-propulsive energy” @andrewIshea @brooklynrail by @juneleafofficial

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4 months ago

Thank you @nicole_rudick @nyrbooks for the in-depth and nuanced discussion of June Leaf, her work, and her current retrospective now on view @allenartmuseum

“June Leaf: Shooting from the Heart” is
an epic retrospective that opened at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts (March 15–July 31, 2025); it traveled to the Grey Art Museum, New York University, New York City, (September 9–December 13, 2025); and opened at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, on January 27, 2026. It will be on view in Ohio through May 24, 2026. Catalogue essays by curators Sam Adams, Allison Kemmerer, and Gordon Wilkins, with contributions by artists Joan Jonas and Kara Walker. Retrospective organized with support from @andrea_glimcher of Hyphen.
@addisongalleryofamericanart @nyugrey @allenartmuseum @allison_kem @gordonwilkins @erie_curator @rizzolibooks by @juneleafofficial

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5 months ago

“June Leaf’s artworks are animated by a force that’s easy to see but difficult to describe. They feel thrillingly dynamic…” wrote @jilnotjill in the @nytimes on the occasion of the artist’s retrospective when it was presented a few months ago @nyugrey in New York City, very nearby the artist’s legendary studio pictured in detail here.

June Leaf: Shooting Through the Heart, the traveling retrospective, opened @addisongalleryofamericanart in 2025 and it is now on view @allenartmuseum through May 24, 2026.

Curated by @allison_kem @gordonwilkins @erie_curator with organizational support from @andrea_glimcher and Hyphen, the epic exhibition is accompanied by a @rizzolibooks catalogue with contributions from Joan Jonas @broadcove and Kara Walker. by @juneleafofficial

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5 months ago

“In 1948 I went to the Institute of Design, the Moholy-Nagy school in Chicago. They were very skillful in teaching you what you needed to do. You found what you wanted to do and then were motivated to learn the things you had to learn in order to do them.

They used to call me the school romantic. Apparently it was very noticeable that I was this raving romantic.

After three months, I left and went to Paris for the first time in 1948,” recalled June Leaf in an interview.

The artist made this self-portrait in one of the small portable notepads she carried around a few years after her 1948 trip to Paris. It’s one of many drawings she made of herself over the years. Drawn with such self-awareness and confidence, the ink portrait shows clearly through the back side of the paper. #mirrorimage by @juneleafofficial

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6 months ago

“Reprising Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper…June Leaf undertakes a gutsy, idiosyncratic venture into well-trodden territory…Her approach does not involve either outright appropriation (as with Warhol’s grandiose Last Supper transcriptions) or the switching of the figures’ identities to highlight a present-day issue. Nor is she interested in parody. Leaf’s series constitutes a highly personal meditation…Leaf gives the figures personalities or roles that play against the “readymade” aspect of the super-famous original,” wrote Elizabeth Baker for @artinamerica in 2010 in response to June Leaf’s take on The Last Supper.

A deep admirer of Leonardo da Vinci, June Leaf appreciated that reproductions of his Last Supper lived in households around the world.

June Leaf, Last Supper, Three Figures, 2015
acrylic on paper mounted on tin, 36 x 48” by @juneleafofficial

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6 months ago

In a handwritten letter sent to her niece in the early 2000s, June Leaf (1929-2024) wrote about the portrait she made of her mother, who was her niece’s grandmother. The work, shown here, is on the brick wall of June’s living room in New York City on Bleecker Street, “I believe I did it in 1958 in my small studio in Paris…wouldn’t it be nice if dear Ruth could get up and smile at you again?” #juneleaf #internationalwomensday photo @andrea_glimcher by @juneleafofficial

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7 months ago

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8 months ago

“June Leaf: Shooting from the Heart” opened today at its third venue, the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College! It arrives in Ohio @allenartmuseum after presentations in Andover, MA @addisongalleryofamericanart and New York City @nyugrey. The critically acclaimed retrospective is the most comprehensive exhibition of Leaf’s work since her 1978 survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago @mcachicago.

Sam Adams, Curator at the Allen, writes: “Performance was part of Leaf's life from a young age. She aspired to be a dancer but felt she was too tall and, by age seventeen, that her feet were too big. Still, she explains, "I think of myself as a dancer making art." At age sixteen she was deeply impacted by a performance she attended by the mime, author, and visual artist Angna Enters, explaining, "She stood up on the stage and she drew and she danced. And I looked at her and I said, 'That's what I'm going to do.' And it's true.” (Exhibition catalogue, p. 69 @rizzolibookstore)

Co-organized by @addisongalleryofamericanart and @allenartmuseum with the collaboration of June Leaf.

Curated by Allison Kemmerer (@allison_kem), Gordon Wilkins (@gordonwilkins), and Sam Adams (@erie_curator)

The exhibition will run January 27 through May 24, 2026. Now’s the chance to see this marvelous show if you missed it before. Follow along for more about exhibition programming and events. Exciting June Leaf news to come!
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June Leaf with "Study for The Head," 1979. Photographer not known. Copyright June Leaf Estate. Courtesy Hyphen, New York

#JuneLeaf #ShootingFromTheHeart #retrospective #contemporaryart #AllenArtMuseum #OberlinCollege by @juneleafofficial

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8 months ago

I look at every pair of hips and every pair of legs and see how they're dancing. To this day, I don't think there's anything I love more than the body dancing. It drives me wild. – June Leaf, Museum Jean Tinguely, 2004
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“Gyroscope Woman” (1952). Tempera and graphite on paper. 6 x 3 1/4 in. Copyright June Leaf Estate. Photo by Kevin Noble, courtesy Hyphen, New York

#juneleaf #contemporaryart #newyorkartist #hyphenadvisory by @juneleafofficial

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