Dolice, Leon Louis

Leon Dolice (1892–1960) was an American artist known for his etchings and pastels of urban scenes. Born in Vienna and trained as a machinist, he left home at the age of 14 to travel in Europe and North Africa. In 1912 he emigrated to New York where he began creating etchings of the city's iconic buildings and by 1922 his work sold well enough for him to devote himself full-time to making art. When etchings lost their popularity in the early 1930s, he began making pastels, oil paintings, woodcuts, and linoleum prints, and when, at the end of the decade, those works did not sell well enough to support him, he made metalwork decorations for interior design. Throughout his career he typically sold his art face-to-face. In the early years he would sell works door-to-door and later out of his own studio-centered galleries. During his travels, Dolice acquired a broad understanding of European art. After arriving in New York, his contacts with local artists and his own artistic instincts led him to develop a style of American modernism that, in time, evolved from a literal realism toward a personal interpretation of abstraction.