Leroy Johnson

“The unbeautiful can be as powerful/attractive as the ‘professed’ beautiful” –Johnson

Johnson, who passed away in 2022, was born in 1937 in the Eastwick community of Southwest Philadelphia. He was a self proclaimed “urban expressionist” whose work was shaped by African American history and life in the inner city. Largely self taught, Johnson sought to create mixed media through painting, collage, and assemblage sculpture within the “Arte Povera” movement — an Italian art movement from the late 1960s to 1970s whose artists explored a range of unconventional processes and non-traditional ‘everyday’ materials.

Gallery hours are Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Wednesdays from noon till 7 p.m..