Leo Wrye Zimmerman: Return to Main Street
Exhibition Spotlights Louisville’s Artistic Past, Present and Future

Cressman Center for Visual Arts Gallery
March 18 – April 16, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, March 18, 6 – 8 p.m.

Panel Discussion:
“Louisville’s Arts Future”
Cressman Center for Visual Arts
Friday, April 1, 5:30pm

First Friday Trolley Hop: April 1, 6:00-9:00pm

The exhibition Leo Wrye Zimmerman: Return to Main Street will open with a reception Friday, March 18 from 6:00-8:00pm at University of Louisville’s Cressman Center for Visual Arts Gallery.  The show will display work from late Louisville artist and eccentric, Leo Zimmerman. 

Zimmerman, who also used the pseudonym Leo Wrye, helped spur a cultural renaissance in Louisville during the 1950’s after spending several years studying art in post WWII Paris, France. During this time, he worked alongside Victor Vasarely, hailed as father of Op-art, and Edgard Pillet, prominent advocate of post-war geometric abstraction. In 1954, Zimmerman returned to Louisville where he worked prolifically within the arts community.  He founded an arts supply store and school, Society for the Arts in Louisville, Arts in Louisville Magazine, Arts House in Louisville, and arts festival, prompting Life magazine and Readers Digest to send reporters to cover the city’s cultural reawakening.