The Invisible Worlds of Leon Steinmetz

St. Anthony-- pen,eye dropper, razerblade scratchers,
black Holbein ink on heavy Fabriano paper, The British Museum

By NOAH BECKER January 2nd, 2026

Noah Becker: What continues to draw you to a free, unrestrained drawing style, and how has that instinct evolved as your work has matured?

Leon Steinmetz: When you’re classically trained, you try to depict accurately what is in front of you, be it a model or a still life. At that stage, a blank canvas or sheet might be intimidating—your goal is simply to master the craft. The frustrating aspect is the gap between what you see in your mind’s eye and what your hand is capable of turning into physical reality. The goal is to keep narrowing this gap until it disappears entirely. That is what maturity, hopefully, accomplishes—you’re no longer intimidated by a blank canvas, and the “unrestrained drawing style” emerges. I would call it “controlled spontaneity”—and that, in particular, is what I most admire Jackson Pollock for.

Now, when you feel complete freedom, an important question comes into play: what, after all, do you wish to say? Goethe once remarked that “great art represents what people could and should see, not what they usually do see.”

But that’s a different topic, and I’ll elaborate on it when I answer your other questions.

 Creatures of the Night, tempera on boardArtist's Collection. Cambridge.

When you say that a visual idea becomes “exhausted,” what signals to you that a theme or topic has reached its end?

When something intrigues, fascinates, or puzzles me, I dive into it, trying to explore and understand its deeper meaning. The process concludes when I come to a point when I can say to myself, “That’s it. I have nothing else to convey.” Or I might stop if I feel the idea is beyond comprehension or if my technique cannot quite capture it.

To give an example, my series Memento Mori has only three works, but when I was working on my Theater series I was so immersed in the Commedia dell’Arte and French classical theater that their characters “moved” into my studio and surrounded me. I simply couldn’t stop depicting them. When I finally felt that I had done all that I could, I counted the artworks—there were fifty-three in total, each accompanied by a brief dialogue between the characters.

The same with my Dante Meditations, I started it when I was very apprehensive about a project I had recently finished, not knowing what would happen to it. To calm myself down, I picked up The Divine Comedy and started reading it, probably for the tenth time in my life. I was almost in a trance in the Inferno with Dante, the Pilgrim. Compared to that, all my anxiety regarding the submitted project became Lilliputian. I didn’t count the drawings while making them. When I finally finished—there were forty-three. I attempted to continue with the Purgatory and the Paradiso, but realized that it was impossible. In the Inferno light cuts through the darkness. In the Purgatory, and especially in the Paradiso, light cuts through light, which for me was impossible to depict, so I felt it was better just to leave the blank sheet blank.
 

 from "the Diary of a Madman." calligraphy, pen, black Holbein ink,
Holbein Watercolor on Heay Arches Paper. the Metropolitan Museum.

Your work moves between abstraction and figuration with ease. How do you decide which direction a new piece or series should take?

Since I feel fairly comfortable in either style, it depends entirely upon the project I’m working on. For example, I was working on an artist’s book, The Diary of a Madman, inspired by the fascinating story by Nikolai Gogol, and invited a calligrapher, John Cataldo, to collaborate with me on the calligraphy. Initially, I thought that the visuals should be figurative, somewhat similar to Gogol’s sketches—Gogol was a good draughtsman, not as good as Victor Hugo but good, and he often drew his characters in the margins of his manuscripts.

Anyway, I thought I’d do something similar: free, figurative drawings on the margins. But when I actually started doing it, I realized that it didn’t work. It didn’t convey the essence of the story—the titular character, Aksenty Poprishchin, a petty clerk in 19th-century St. Petersburg, going insane. Only through abstraction—with Poprishchin’s handwriting becoming more and more indecipherable, the colors becoming somber and darker, the calligraphy being manipulated, reduced, enlarged, pasted up, covered with splashes of black and blood-red ink—could I visually express Poprishchin falling into madness.

In Dante Meditations I deliberately stayed away from pure figuration in the vein of Gustave Doré, with his condemned souls looking like bodybuilders flying over some cliffs. I wanted to depict these souls as constantly evolving, changing shape in front of Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil, his guide. They don’t even cast a shadow—only Dante, the Narrator, does. So the series ended up almost abstract.

The Fiends Triumphant, pen, black Holbein ink, on heavy Fabriano paper,
Collection of TRH Prince and Princess Michael of kent. Kensington Palas. London

In my series Werther’s Drawings, I tried to imagine what kind of drawings Werther, the hero of Goethe’s masterpiece novella The Sorrows of Young Werther, who loved to draw, would draw were he to live in our time. Thus, the first drawing, his self-portrait, is figurative. After that, some of the drawings are semi-figurative, some are pure abstractions.

In my The Judgement of Paris diptych, the left panel represents how this event—Paris selecting the most beautiful of goddesses—would have been depicted in the 19th century (quite figuratively), and the right panel how it would be presented in the 21st (almost abstract). So, I sometimes go from figuration to abstraction within the same painting.

There’s often a playful, witty tone in your drawings. How intentional is that, and what role does humor play in your studio practice?

This is absolutely correct, but I wouldn’t call it humor. I’d call it comic. Horace Walpole once remarked that “life seems comic to those who think, and tragic to those who feel”—I tend to agree with that. That is why my work very often intertwines both the comic and tragic aspects of the human condition. Sometimes it’s purely comic, as in my Commedia dell’Arte series. Sometimes it’s clearly tragic, as in Looking into the Abyss—a set of portraits of contemporary people who are in Purgatory, looking sad and apprehensive, not knowing whether the “elevator” will take them up or down.

The series was inspired by a few lines from The Divine Comedy:

“E io: ‘Maestro, che è tanto greve a lor che lamentar li fa si forte?’

Rispuose: ‘Dicerolti molto breve’

And I: ‘O Master, what so grievous is

To these, that maketh them lament so sore?’

He answered: ‘I will tell thee very briefly.’”

Despite the place it depicts, the series is completely figurative—black and gray intertwining, fading into the mysterious Limbo.

Your work is held in major museum collections around the world. How does that kind of institutional recognition shape your thinking about your art, if at all?

Frankly, it does, in a peculiar way. When I recall that those works were once in my modest studio in Cambridge, and are now in the same building, or maybe even in the same room, that holds Goya’s drawings—and that people whom I don’t know take care of them, and that years from now, perhaps some people who have not yet been born will see them—that’s very humbling.

If I say it doesn’t provide some comforting feeling, I wouldn’t be telling the truth—it does. But that’s not the main thing. When I’m in the process of creating an artwork, I’m essentially doing it for myself, trying, with what abilities I have, to find answers to the Ultimate Questions. Thus, the themes—Demons of the Deluge, Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Memento Mori, etc.—are themes that always fascinated artists from Leonardo to Picasso. Perhaps this may sound too ambitious, but it’s the truth.

The Tower of Babel, Oil on board. Sometimes our efforts are futile.
Exhibited at London Art Biennale 2025. Emanuel von Baeyer Gallery. London.

You frequently turn to writers like Ovid and Gogol for inspiration. What is it about literature that opens up such strong visual possibilities for you?

For me it’s not just literature; it’s that the greatest of the great were constantly trying to find answers to the same questions as I. Please don’t misunderstand me; in no way would I compare myself to such geniuses. But I know for sure that without having read Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Dante, Montaigne, or Tolstoy, I would have never created the artworks that I have.

For me, every creative genius—from Bosch to Bruegel, from Beethoven to Tolstoy to Federico Fellini—is always a philosopher first; their actual occupation is just a tool. Thus, Brueghel was a philosopher-painter, Beethoven a philosopher-composer, Tolstoy a philosopher-writer, and Fellini a philosopher-filmmaker, and so on. If we take Fellini as an example and imagine him being born during the Italian Renaissance, I would wager that he would have been a fresco painter of genius—but he was born in the 20th century, and so his tool of discovery and expression was the film camera.

from "insects of the Apocalypse. "
Pen, black Holbein ink on Winsor & Newton paper. Albetina Vienna

Your recent solo exhibition at the Pushkin Museum was a significant milestone. What did that experience reveal to you about your work and where it’s heading?

I actually had two solo shows at the Pushkin. One took place in 2009–2010 and was called Contemplating Nikolai Gogol. It was held to celebrate the 200th birthday of that maverick genius, whom I’ve always been fascinated by. He was a surrealist a hundred years before the term was even coined—and, as a surrealist, he is one hundred times better than Breton and Dalí combined. He was also a visionary and a deeply spiritual man—a perfect example of someone intertwining the comic and tragic aspects of the human condition.

His early Ukrainian tales are populated by demons and fiends from Ukrainian folklore, but they are vulnerable, harmless, and funny. In his main opus, Dead Souls, Gogol’s devils are not harmless anymore. The main character, Chichikov, travels across Russia buying dead souls (souls being a colloquial term in Russia for serfs).

“But I digress…Dead Souls is very tempting to elaborate on.”

My second show at the Pushkin, a few years later, was called The Spell of Antiquity, in which my works, inspired by classical antiquity, were exhibited alongside art of the 5th century BC from the Pushkin Museum’s outstanding collection—a dialogue across twenty-seven centuries.

from "Walpurgis Night" Witches Arguing.brush. hand,
black Holbein gouache on Winsor & Newton paper Staatliche Kunstmmlungen. Dresden

Your use of color is often described as refined and elegant. How do you approach color in relation to your line work and gestural energy?

Everything comes from what I want to say and what I feel is the best way to say it. Sometimes a black line is all one needs, and even a single drop of color would detract from the vision I have in mind. Sometimes I know that a piece must be in color. But when color is used, it all depends on what it is used for. Thus, for Commedia dell’Arte I felt the colors should be dense, bright, and energetic. Meanwhile, for Robespierre’s Dreams, where Maximilien Robespierre signs a contract with the Devil, the color is harsh and cacophonic. And for Ovid, to convey his hazy, bucolic world, I felt that soft, fading watercolors on Arches paper were most appropriate.

 Imaginary Landscape,  Tempra on board. Artist's Collection. Cambridge.

Magic Letters, Tempera on board, Private collection. Boston.

  from "The Dance of Salome." pen, sepia ink on Winsor & Newton paper. Gurari Collections. Boston.

You’ve created acclaimed collector’s books alongside your drawings. How does working in a book format allow you to explore ideas differently than working on paper or canvas?

When you’re working on paper or canvas, you work on one artwork at a time—even when it’s part of a series, it’s still a self-contained piece. This issue always comes up when one works on an artist’s book. Although the sheets can be presented individually, the main goal is to create an ensemble, like a piece of architecture or a film, where everything must be coherently connected and tell a story.

An artist’s book is also a three-dimensional object—you hold it in your hands, turn the pages, and contemplate the drawings. Drawing creates an immediate connection between you and the work, allowing an intimacy that painting does not always permit.

Looking across your career, what continues to motivate you to push your visual language and explore new territory?

To keep knocking on the doors of higher spirituality and thought, exploring what is, to a large extent, impossible to comprehend. Searching for answers through different themes, topics, and techniques, trying to crack the wall that separates the visible and the invisible worlds.