w

magine yourself with a smile of your
own because you stayed within
your budget while making all those
holiday dreams
come true.

very good living. And
Leonard said, 'But I can pick
up a camera and do that: For
him, that was not art because
he wasn't expressing
himself?'
Encouraged by friends and
driven by his own passion for
art, Schwartz enrolled at the
Arts and Crafts School in
Detroit and later majored in
philosophy and art at Wayne
State University.
He then joined the army
and was stationed in Paris,
where he stayed from 1946 to
1949 to study with sculptor
Ossip Zadkine at the
Academie de la Grande
Chaumiere. He returned in
1950 to the United States,
bringing with him a Gug-
genheim Fellowship for
sculpture and his future wife,
Eileen.
"The one break Leonard got
in his life was Eileen," Shaw
says. "She supported him
through everything. She
never even told him to go out
and get a job?'
Earning money was not
easy for Leonard Schwartz.
Critics praised his work — a
critic on the British Broad-
casting Corp. said Schwartz
"has begun where Rodin left
off" — but Schwartz spent
much of his life trying to find
financial sources for his art.

He held one-man shows in
cities throughout the world
including Paris, New York,
Detroit, Houston, Dallas and
London.
Schwartz spent much of his
life in Europe, but he never
lost contact with of his friends
Joseph Epel, Donald Schiller,
4 Irwin Shaw and Irving Rosen.
He frequently sent them
gifts — or, in Shaw's case,
perfected a gift he had given
many years before.
When Schwartz was young,
he sculpted a bust of Shaw.
The nose later broke off, but
Shaw never considered for a
moment discarding the
artwork.
Schwartz couldn't forget
that broken nose. During a
visit from Europe, he went to
Shaw's home and recast the
head in bronze.
It was an expensive gesture
for one who had little money,
Shaw recalls, but Schwartz
was quick to give whenever
he could.
And that was the spirit,
friends say, in which he
created "The Offering" — the
8-foot-tall limestone sculpture
at the JCC.
The sculpture's mother-and-

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Leonard Schwartz:
Art for art's sake

child theme is one that
haunted Schwartz's work,
Schiller says, "I think
because he missed that in his
own lifetime."
Shaw, Schiller and Rosen
all helped Schwartz secure
money to build the sculpture
and to find lodgings and a
place in which to work. He
settled on a barn.
Schwartz's permanent
studio was hardly more
elegant, Schiller recalls. It
was a large garage filled with
stones — "any place he went
he always brought back
stones" — where Schwartz
could be found from 4 a.m. un-
til all hours of the night. And
those rare times he took a
break, it was to read art
history, Schiller says.
He also took time away
from his own art to teach.
Among the schools at which
he worked were the Denver
Art Academy, the Manchester
College of Art and Design in
England and the University
9f Colorado. In 1972, he
returned to the United States,
where he worked as chairman
of the art department at Im-
maculate Heart and Mount
St. Mary's colleges in Los
Angeles until his death.
Students and friends,
speaking at his funeral, recall
Schwartz as "an inspiring
motivator, a man with unflin-
ching optimism and en-
thusiasm and a sincerity that
went directly to the heart."
His friends agree that
Schwartz was a man who took
tremendous pleasure in his
life and his work, though his
sculptures always carried the
secrets of his painful
childhood.
"There was always such
sadness in his work," Joseph
Epel says. "That's why it
didn't sell."

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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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