Shaun Leonardo

Portrait of Shaun Leonardo, 2024. Photo by Argenis Apolinario.
Shaun Leonardo (b. 1979, Queens, NY) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work negotiates societal expectations of manhood, namely definitions surrounding Black and brown masculinities, along with its notions of achievement, collective identity, and experience of failure. Leonardo received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has received support from Creative Capital, Guggenheim Social Practice, Art for Justice, and A Blade of Grass. His work is currently included in the traveling group exhibition Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture, open now at the Perez Art Museum Miami.
Leonardo’s work has also been featured at the Guggenheim Museum, the Norton Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Queens Museum, the High Line, and the New Museum, and profiled in The New York Times, Artnet News, and CNN. His solo exhibition, The Breath of Empty Space, was presented at MICA, MASS MoCA, and The Bronx Museum, and his first major public art commission, Between Four Freedoms, premiered at Four Freedoms Park Conservancy in 2021. Numerous institutions hold Leonardo’s work in their collections, including the Bowdoin Museum of Art, the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Art Collection, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, the Portland Museum of Art, the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Shaun Leonardo, Self-Portrait Icon (Sculpture), 2007. Marble. 24 x 6 x 24 inches (61 x 15.2 x 61 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York.
Shaun Leonardo, Self-Portrait Superhero 4 (Sleeping Giant), 2008. Sign enamel on plywood cutout. 48 x 70 x 3/4 inches (121.9 x 177.8 x 1.9 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York.
Shaun Leonardo, Champ (Mike Tyson), 2014. Charcoal on paper. 76 1/8 x 64 inches (193.4 x 162.6 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York.