Across a career that spanned some 75 years, June Leaf (1929–2024) produced a remarkable body of work that revels in the human experience in all its banality and sublimity. Armed with indefatigable energy, an inventive mind, and a wry, closely observing eye, Leaf nimbly navigated the planes of the real and the imagined, holding a mirror up to essential truths while reminding us of our shared humanity.

Born in Chicago and trained at the New Bauhaus, Leaf experienced two formative stints in Paris before relocating to New York. The artist’s career took off here in 1968 with her carnivalesque, breakout exhibition Street Dreams at Allan Frumkin Gallery. In the 1970s, living part­time in a remote fishing village in Nova Scotia, Canada, Leaf began creating the densely layered drawings and paintings and the expressive tin and wire figurative sculptures for which she is best known.

Perpetually rearranging both complete and in-progress works in microcosmic configurations, Leaf created a recurring cast of characters, compositions, and stories that synthesized outside influences with symbols drawn from her own self-mythology. Her figures wobble, jostle, climb, and spin as they engage in a timeless struggle for agency within metaphysical chambers—some evocative of Leaf’s studios, and others of seedy bars, dollhouses, and theater stages.

Arranged thematically rather than chronologically to honor the artist’s cyclical returns to a core set of motifs, this exhibition locates Leaf in the artistic legacies of the Chicago and New York milieus to which she contributed. Playful and dark, ecstatic and esoteric, the mythic aspects of Leaf’s artistic vision defy categorization into any particular art movement, though her works display shared preoccupations with her contemporaries—including a passion for drama and urban streets, an expansive idea of the feminine, and a fascination with kinetic movement. In her studio every day to weld, draw, and paint, Leaf was an epic poet of human relations and experiences.

Accompanied by a significant scholarly publication published by the co-organizers and Rizzoli Electa, the exhibition debuted at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy (March 15–July 31, 2025) before traveling to the Grey Art Museum at New York University (September 9–December 13, 2025) and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College (January 27–May 24, 2026).

Header image: Detail, June Leaf, Two Women on a Jack, 2001. Metal, tin, wire, wood, and ratcheting-jack components. 941/2 × 341/2 × 131/2 in. Elyse and Lawrence
Benenson Collection. Courtesy Estate of June Leaf and Ortuzar, New York © Estate of June Leaf. Photo: Dario Lasagni