Leonardo Nierman Mendelejis (1 November 1932 – 7 June 2023) was a Mexican artist mostly known for his painting and sculpture. He at first wanted to be a violinist, but gave it up after twenty years when he compared a recording of his playing with that of Yehudi Menuhin. However, his musical training has been a major influence on his painting and sculpture, reproducing movement and harmony as Nierman sees similarities between the two disciplines. Nierman had had exhibitions in Mexico and abroad and over sixty recognitions of his work, half of which are from outside Mexico. His work is abstract but still with discernible images from nature such as birds, water, lightning and more. His paintings are in pure colors while his sculptures are generally of metal, often silver-toned.
Life
Leonardo Nierman Mendelejis was born in Mexico City on 1 November 1932. He was the only child of Lithuanian Jewish parents Clara Mendelejis, a bakery worker and Chanel Nierman, a bus inspector who later started a small jacket factory. Nierman's parents arrived to Mexico in the mid-1920s, his father from Lithuania and his mother from the Ukraine, both poor. The two met in Mexico.
When he was a child, he wanted to be a musician and dedicated himself to the violin for two decades. At that time, art did not attract him although he remembers seeing the murals of Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco but with little reaction except anger upon seeing some vandalism on an Orozco mural. To pursue music, he began with private violin lessons and attended the National Conservatory of Music of Mexico for a while. He even gave some recitals in the Palacio de Bellas Artes. He gave up the violin when he heard a recording of himself playing Symphonie espagnole by Édouard Lalo, and then comparing his interpretation with that of Yehudi Menuhin.
At first, he thought he had wasted his time with the violin but had since decided that it gave him his philosophy on life and prepared him for his painting and sculpture. After he left music, he began to be attracted to color, but he remained attached to music, especially artists such as Bach, Debussy, Mahler and Stravinsky. However, he was still hesitant about painting. He remembered that one day he was walking in the historic center of Mexico City and found an artist's supply shop and thought about taking up painting as a hobby, but then thought he could not because of lack of preparation.
Despite his affinity for the arts, Nierman's formal education was not in this field. He graduated from preparatory in 1951, with a concentration in physics and mathematics. In 1953, he studied the psychology of color and form in static and moving bodies. He also began spending large amounts of time in museums. He completed a bachelor's in business administration at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México but never pursued this career because he had begun to paint, including a mural at his school. He began painting on his own in his bedroom in his parents’ home. He never thought he would become professional but little by little the activity began to consume most of his time, becoming a self-taught artist.
Nierman died on 7 June 2023, at the age of 90.
Career
Nierman began his career painting when he convinced the dean of the business school where he was a student, to paint a mural at the department's auditorium in 1956. To paint the mural, he made an appointment with David Alfaro Siqueiros to ask for advice, receiving such especially the mixing of colors. The mural was later destroyed when the wall was taken down.
Nierman had been painting for a while when Raquel Tibol invited him to exhibit his work at the Centro de Deportes Israeli in Mexico City. He told himself that if he did not sell a single painting, he would quit. Two paintings were purchased and were then seen by the owner of IFA Gallery in Washington, DC. Since 1959, this gallery has exhibited Nierman's work and opened doors for him internationally.
From then, he held over 100 exhibitions in the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe. More recent exhibitions include the Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila in 2000, the International Museum of Art & Science in Mcallen, Texas in 2009, the MACAY museum in Mérida in 2012, the Francisco Cossío Museum in San Luis Potosí in 2012, and the art gallery of the Complejo Cultural Universitario in the city of Puebla in 2012.