Dennis Leon, Tondo

Dennis Leon's Tondo seems like it might be an architectural fragment. The artist used plaster to build a tangle of organic shapes and incomplete forms that suggest broken bodies. No entire human figure is discernible in the masses that resemble legs, torsos, or arms -an orgy of parts that conveys the visceral energy of the figure.

Born in London in 1933, Leon came to the United States in 1951 to study at Temple University's Tyler School of Art. Leon was an art critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1959–1962 and taught at the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts) from 1959–1970. He moved to the California Bay Area in 1972 and taught at California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts) until 1993.