Leona Wood
Author profile
born
May 21, 1921
in Puget Sound in Washington, The United States
died
February 07, 2008
website
genre
About this author
Leona Wood, a painter, teacher and expert in Middle Eastern dance who co-founded the Aman Folk Ensemble -- once the largest and best-known dance company in Southern California -- died in her West Los Angeles home Feb. 7. She was 86.
Wood always liked to say that she had two careers in the arts, gaining renown as a painter starting in her teenage years and later working as a designer and illustrator in New York City.
But her early ballet studies ultimately led her in another direction, and along with her teaching activities, she developed performing and staging skills that led her to form and direct Aman with choreographer Anthony Shay. They worked together for 15 years.
"Leona Wood was a pioneer in the field of staging traditional Middle Easte...more
Leona Wood, a painter, teacher and expert in Middle Eastern dance who co-founded the Aman Folk Ensemble -- once the largest and best-known dance company in Southern California -- died in her West Los Angeles home Feb. 7. She was 86.
Wood always liked to say that she had two careers in the arts, gaining renown as a painter starting in her teenage years and later working as a designer and illustrator in New York City.
But her early ballet studies ultimately led her in another direction, and along with her teaching activities, she developed performing and staging skills that led her to form and direct Aman with choreographer Anthony Shay. They worked together for 15 years.
"Leona Wood was a pioneer in the field of staging traditional Middle Eastern dances," Shay said this week. "She had exacting standards in both her visual and choreographic productions and always displayed sensitivity to the cultures which her dances represented."
Wood was born near Puget Sound in Washington on May 21, 1921. She had an athletic childhood but learned to play the piano and studied ballet in Seattle with Ivan Novikoff (who later taught Robert Joffrey). She also learned her first folk dances at that time but soon abandoned dance for painting. Early in that career, she had a one-woman exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, then received a fellowship to study design in San Francisco and later exhibited in Europe, New York and on the West Coast.
In 1939, she married Alaska-born physicist Phillip Harland and soon moved to New York City, working as a designer for Dorland International, Pettingell and Fenton. After World War II, she came West to head Fenton's Los Angeles office.
In the 1950s, her paintings adorned the De Beers "A Diamond Is Forever" ad campaign, and she also exhibited widely, with the Lane Galleries in Los Angeles serving as an outlet for her work for more than a quarter-century. Art patron Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder of New York City Ballet, became one of her most enthusiastic advocates on the East Coast.
A 1958 profile of her in American Artist noted that "reviewers wrote of her 'beautiful masterly works and were reminded of Arch-Renaissance perfection.' " The profile also praised her skill as a sculptor, mosaic artist and goldsmith, and Wood herself was quoted as saying "I always compare what I am doing with the past. This saves me from the egotism of the painters who only measure their work against that of their contemporaries."
-Lewis Segal, LA Times Staff Writer(less)
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3.49 avg rating — 524 ratings
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published
1963
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17 editions
