Alfred Leslie Obituary

Alfred Leslie was an American painter and filmmaker. He first achieved success as an Abstract Expressionist painter but changed course in the early 1960s and became a painter of realistic figurative paintings.

On October 17, 1966, nearly all of Leslie’s monochrome paintings were destroyed in a fire. Shortly afterwards, Leslie introduced colour into his paintings, which have been widely exhibited.

Leslie was known for his large-scale charcoal drawings and his work as a photographer and filmmaker. Together with Robert Frank, Leslie directed the short film, Pull My Daisy in 1959.

The film, narrated by Jack Kerouac, was selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1996. He also created the film directions: A Walk After the War Games, The Last Clean Shirt with the poet Frank O’Hara, and many others.