Art Dealer David Leonardis
By Susan Wade Dewey
April 15, 1993
This is the story of how David Leonardis, an enthusiastic and persistent 26-year-old Wicker Park art dealer, came to know Paul Warhola, a retired scrap metal dealer, Pennsylvania chicken farmer and painter who happens to be Andy Warhol’s big brother.
“It happened last December, when I was mailing out invites for one of my show openings,” Leonardis explains from the back room of his Paulina Street gallery/loft apartment. A friend and fellow art dealer saw the mailer, a colorful piece featuring the work of the Rev. Howard Finster (a Georgia folk artist whose best-known work appears on the cover of the Talking Heads’ “Little Creatures” album), and asked Leonardis if he would be interested in showing the work of Paul Warhola. “I said yes, he gave me Paul’s phone number, and the next thing I know I’m driving 800 miles to his chicken farm outside Pittsburgh to meet him.”
The two apparently hit it off well. Leonardis is glad to show off color snapshots of himself and Chicago artist Chris Peldo next to the round, bearded and mostly bald man they had traveled so far to see. “He liked me,” Leonardis says. “He liked that I was young, enthusiastic, and willing to do the legwork.” Before his visit ended, Leonardis videotaped Warhola at work on his farm; Warhola in turn gave him an original work: a painting of a Heinz ketchup bottle with the brand name spelled out in Japanese symbols along the side.
In hindsight, the meeting isn’t so surprising.
A retired man in his late 60s and the father of seven children, Warhola had become something of a media phenomenon since 1989 when he jokingly offered to paint a picture for a friend who had wanted to buy an Andy Warhol original. He had been toying with the idea of filling some of his newly-found spare time with painting, and when the friend offered to pay for his paintings, he got started. He sold the first three – featuring ketchup bottles and cans of baked beans – for $1,050. Soon after, on the late Andy Warhol’s birthday, a reporter and photographer from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette showed up at Warhola’s farm to interview the pop icon’s brother. When the reporter, Donald Miller, noticed the canvases in the corner, he put a different twist on his story. The Associated Press picked up the story and soon Paul Warhola’s face and story began appearing everywhere from Life, and Village Voice and USA Today to “Good Morning America” and “Hard Copy.”
The story had definite appeal for Leonardis. The son of an artist and a “millionaire businessman,” he says he was born to be an art dealer. And indeed, his passion for both art and making money is palpable. His preferences in art tend toward works by those most often labeled folk or pop artists – categories Warhola embodies on a couple of counts. And he plans to sell quite a few Warhola originals – for several times what he paid Warhola for them. The bidding will begin May 1 when his exhibit “Andy’s Brother: Paul Warhola Gets His Due,” opens at his self-titled gallery, located at 1352 N. Paulina St.
In an announcement that appeared in the Chicago Reader last week, Leonardis was quoted saying “This is a chance for people who missed out on buying Keith Harrings and Andy Warhols when the price was low to get a Warhola before the prices begin to climb.” What an opportunity. What a deal. Would Andy mind? Probably not. He was once quoted as saying ‘Making money is art, and good business is the best art.”
Leonardis began his young career in the art world when he bought his first piece of art – a painting by Rev. Finster – from the gallery he was working for. Then he bought a few more. After several months, he decided to go straight to the source: in 1990 he called the aging Southern Baptist artist on the phone, said he was a huge fan, and told him he wanted to make T-shirts from his works. In a plot twist with more than a coincidental resemblance to the Warhola story, Finster – another man who knows the value of his work (he often makes hundreds of copies of his works using a Xerox machine and stencils) – took him up on his offer. Leonardis left his gallery job and made a pilgrimage to Finster’s home in Summerville, Ga. There he bought several pieces of art. He videotaped the artist at work. And eventually he worked out a licensing agreement that allows him to make and sell silk-screened T-shirts, ties and prints from Finster’s originals.
When word spread about his growing Finster collection, Leonardis decided to open a gallery where he could properly show the work – and command a higher price. His first store opened and closed within a month – a victim, he says, of the country’s decision to bomb Iraq. In April 1992 he opened his current Wicker Park shop, a three-room loft with a garage door boasting a spray-can mural by graffiti-style artists Lee and DZine. Finster is still his main inspiration (he called the gallery’s back room, brimming with brightly colored wood cut-outs, the Finster Room), but he has also turned his attention to a number of Chicago artists including Shane Swank, Glenn Wexler, Tom Billings and Chris Peldo, whose work is now appearing in Absolut Vodka ads throughout the state. Because he believes in the artists he represents, he says, he gives them half of all proceeds on their works.
The shop is still young, but Leonardis is adamantly optimistic about its future. “I’m motivated to stay in business,” he says. “No matter what the economy does, people have and always will sell art. The key is to be proactive, persistent… and lucky.” Leonardis makes a habit of attending openings at other galleries so he can meet and talk with those who have the money to invest in art. He also knows how to barter: he points to a spot on the street where he parks his black 1986 Thunderbird coupe, a car he purchased with $270 and several pieces of art he originally bought for $300. To keep a cash flow, he works part-time as a waiter for Chicago’s high-society caterer George Jewell. And he keeps his overhead low: he pays just $900 a month for the gallery he also calls home.
His next show, opening this Saturday, will feature works by Bob Christy and Jay Steensma, two highly- regarded and eccentric artists from the Pacific Northwest. Then comes the Warhola show in May. Then what? “I’m thinking of calling Roy Lichtenstein next,” he says. “That’s a fact.”