The Devotional Figure

Elliott Templeton Fine Arts is delighted to present a solo exhibition of selected works by the artist John Brock Lear. This is the first solo exhibition of Lear's work in New York and his first solo presentation since 2013. Lear was born in 1910 in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia, where he spent the entirety of his life. He studied illustration at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art, where he was trained to produce work in a social realist style. In his sole departure from Chestnut Hill, Lear served in the US Army during WWII in a non-combat position where he was hired as an illustrator for manuals and booklets. In response to the war, Lear shifts to a style that places his subjects in surrealist environments, often ones of architectural decay, which became his signature focus for the remainder of his career. The works in this exhibition represent the later works of Lear, which focus on the male form, featuring classical-like figures in surreal, minimalist landscapes. Lear worked from imagined subjects, often dressing them in a thin cloth wrap or tight-fitting garments that highlight their musculature—they might resemble gladiators, circus performers, or Biblical personae. This meditation on the male body in magical realist settings readily evokes the work of Paul Cadmus and Jared French, although Lear's body of work reveals a quieter devotion: he repeats these male subjects for decades, producing statuesque, mythical embodiments of perfect form well into his late nineties, as a kind of sacred, private practice. Lear taught illustration at Rosemont College, the Hussian School of Arts, and the Philadelphia College of Art. He exhibits his work regularly in galleries across Philadelphia and contributes illustrations to various publications throughout his career. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Woodmere Art Museum, the Detroit Museum, the Florida Gulf Coast Art Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Reading Public Museum.