Assemblage Artist Leo Kaplan Passes Away at the Age of 100

“Jiminy” by Artist Leo Kaplan

By Sharon Aron Baron

The country lost a great artist in July when Leo Kaplan passed away at the age of 100.

This 35-year resident of the Woodlands Country Club in Tamarac left a legacy of art behind. Kaplan lived in Forest Trace with his wife Jane before he died. However, they still owned their home in the Woodlands until August.

Kaplan is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Fine and Applied Art School and was listed in “Who’s Who in American Art” as both an Assemblage and Collage Artist.

Kaplan’s work is in the permanent collection of the Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester; Everson Gallery, Syracuse; McNey Museum, San Antonio, in several Corporate Collections, including Chase Manhatten, Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, and over 800 private collections. Rosie O’Donnell is one of the many private collectors who own his work.

Here is an article written about him in the Miami Herald back in 1985:

January 20, 1985
Author: Ruth Beckles
Herald Staff Writer

Rummaging through relics found at antique shows and flea markets, Leo Kaplan usually comes home with a collection of items most people would describe as junk. Marbles, rubber balls, old letters, typewriter keys, and screws they’re all things that, once they’ve outlived their usefulness, are usually thrown into the trash.

But Kaplan, 73, takes these common articles and arranges them into assemblages and collages, works of art. Each one is carefully designed in a wooden box to tell a particular story centered around a certain theme.

Leo Kaplan – Artist

“Something that I see in a flea market will trigger an idea for a box, and I’ll develop around it,” Kaplan said. “They are little worlds, little environments that have a nostalgic feel.”

His garage is packed with boxes carefully marked for the valuable contents inside, the items he uses to make his creations. Designing collages and assemblages is more than a hobby to the Tamarac artist, who has been doing them for 25 years. It’s a second career.

Collages and assemblages are two distinct works. A collage is primarily a composition on paper that gets its name from the French word “coller,” which means to glue. An assemblage is a collage where an artist takes objects and through his imagination gives them a new identity in a new arrangement, Kaplan explained, “combines a person’s memorabilia into something he can hang on a wall and treasure rather than keep in a drawer where they can get lost.”

He is paid between $1,500 and $15,000 for his creations. He has been featured in 650 public, private, and corporate collections nationwide, including the Alan Brown Gallery in Hartsdale, New York; Oxford Gallery in Rochester, New York; and the Barbara Gillman Gallery in Miami.

Article in Woodlands Magazine about Leo Kaplan

Kaplan has also won several awards at art shows, including the Merit Award in the Annual Hortt Memorial Competition and Exhibition in Fort Lauderdale and the Best of Show Award at the Brockport State University show. He has traveled to Spain, Japan, China, England, and Africa, collecting pieces that would eventually become part of an assemblage. Kaplan started his career making assemblages in deep frames of ash, maple, or cherry wood.

Each type of wood has its own feel, designed to compliment the items in a particular composition. “Something about wood type is that it could whisper or shout,” he said. “I felt they worked better when they were confined in a box,” he said. “They relate better and become more a part of a complete composition.”

Kaplan has always been interested in art. He attended Rochester Institute of Technology in New York and graduated as a commercial artist. Although he did some painting in college, it never held his interest.

“I get no satisfaction from painting, but I feel more or less a feeling of accomplishment when I complete a box and somebody wants to own it.”

He worked for the Great Lakes Press, a Rochester-based color lithographing firm, for 30 years and designed annual reports, catalogs, advertising literature, displays, and packages. He was the company’s art director for 20 years and the creative director for the remaining 10.

During his tenure with the company, Kaplan combined both careers, occasionally using an assemblage for the cover of an annual report. He worked on his collages and assemblages during the evenings and weekends. When he retired and moved to Tamarac seven years ago, it became a full-time job.

Kaplan has been married for 44 years and considers his wife, Jane, one of his greatest supporters. Remember, what may be junk to others is not junk to Kaplan but part of a work of art.

“There’s nothing that you can’t use,” he said.