Press release: Re: His Majesty Mohammed VI King of Morocco...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Anders Knutsson, Curator Te: 718-622-3432 e-mail: a.knutsson@att.net
Leon Nicholas Kalas Te: 718-797-3943 e-mail Greco.kalas89@gmail.com

His Majesty Mohammed VI King of Morocco
(Portraits in oil on canvas)
Date: Friday July 09, 2010 From 6:00 to 8:00 P.M.
Place: TOWN AND COUNTRY 352 GALLERY
352 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11217
One day preview free art exhibit
Direction: F train to Bergen Street Station. Walk 2 blocks to Atlantic Avenue
By car: Cross Brooklyn Bridge, go straight ahead to Atlantic Ave. Make left.

In May 2009, Brooklyn visual artist Leon Nicholas Kalas was invited by Bouregreg Association of the City of Dale in Morocco, to participate in the International Collective Art Exhibition in Rabat, Morocco.
The visit to this stunningly beautiful country and his experience of the warm, friendly and very hospitable people of Morocco made a deep impression on Mr. Kalas. But it was perhaps mostly the King’s democratic rule of the country that inspired Mr. Kalas to create this series of portraits of His Majesty Mohammed VI King of Morocco, the Crown Prince, and the Royal Family. These portraits, executed in oil on canvas, are now shown for the first time in a preview exhibit.
These contemporary portraits are a cohesive body of work that clearly reflects Leon Nicholas Kalas’s style of portraiture. His work relates more to the cool, reductive contemporary style of Alex Katz and David Hockney, than the more emotional expression of a Lucian Freud or super-realism of early Chuck Close.
Leon Nicholas Kalas is a figurative painter who has studied portraiture and human anatomy at the New York Academy of Art, The Art Students League of New York, and FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology). His works has been exhibited extensively in New York and Maryland galleries. In June of 2005, one of his paintings was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. His works has been collected throughout the United States, Europe, Morocco, Canada, and the Caribbean. His work is also in the Library of Congress, and the Clinton Presidential Library (Little Rock, AK). Articles about his art have been published in NYArts Magazine, Brooklyn Fine Arts Magazine, and Boheme Magazine in Paris, France and various newspapers such as Caribbean News, The Brooklyn Eagle and Brooklyn Courier. Mr. Kalas has participated in Art Camps and Cultural Exchanges in Morocco and Romania. He now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Important portraits he has painted are of actors Sidney Pointier and Tony Curtis, Fashion Designer Valentino Garavani, and US Senator, Roland Boris.
###