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Leonard Bocour (March 18, 1910 – September 6, 1993) was an American artist.

Life and work

Bocour was born in New York City. Around 1933 he formed the New York City based company Bocour Artists Colors.

He was the co-developer, along with Sam Golden, of Magna paint, the world's first artist acrylic paint.

From 1952 until 1970 he and Sam Golden were partners in the Bocour Artists Colors Co. The company sold artist paints from the late 1930s until the 1990s.

Many well-known artists from Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning to Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and hundreds of others bought paint from Leonard Bocour.

The tubes of paint marked Bocour were watercolor or oil paint and the tubes labeled Bellini were oil paint. The acrylic paint was thick bodied and called Aquatec.

Bocour was a serious art collector, in addition to being a well-known paint manufacturer. He collected and owned works by many of his now famous customers.

Interview excerpt

Oral history interview with Leonard Bocour At his apartment on Riverside Drive, New York, New York June 8, 1978 Interviewer: Paul Cummings

LB: ... this is 1932 ... I was working at an advertising agency, not doing anything that had to do with art; it had to do with checking. A 'checker' in an advertising agency gets the newspapers, checks, puts a crayon around the edge -- he has a pay job --and then he puts it in a book. It's very, very monotonous stupid work --

PC: Cut and paste.

LB: Yes, you know, it was an easy job. And I got fired. I got fired; so, you know, it was very -- you know, the Depression; in those days it was really depressing; the future looked very bleak. There was no unemployment insurance, none of the social services. I went to see my spiritual leader, Emil Ganso. And Emil, I dare say was very sympathetic at that time. What do you do? And it was he who suggested that I make paint for artists. And nobody went into a surer thing because, he said, (LB laughs) "If you don't sell it, we can always use it!"

More:

So, anyway, we rented this place, it was down on -- 2 West 15th Street. It was like a large closet. You could touch both walls. There was one window. The reason we rented that room: there was a big rolltop desk. We took the rolltop off and threw that away and used the desk as a grinding table. Gee, I should have brought you some pictures -- maybe you can come up to -- I have some old photographs. And that was Bocour Hand-ground Colors. I was in that building for at least twelve or fourteen years. I was told that in that building, the top floor was full of skylight studios. One of the most famous artists at that time was William Zorach, he had a studio on the corner there. Jo Jones had a studio --

PC: I've seen photographs of him in that studio. Who else was there?

LB: Oh, Joe de Martini [Joseph de Martini] was there. Now there's a guy -- you think of de Martini -- God, he was so famous, and popular. Joe's about 80-something; 87, maybe; I don't know. I have a few of his paintings. I love his work. A seascape, up there. Well, anyway, we started to --

PC: Why did he say make artists; colors? Were they hard to buy?

LB: No! It was just something to do. Oh yeah he had -- I forgot to mention. . . When we got friendly with him, we noticed in the corner of the studio there was a little kitchen table with a glass top and a motor. And he used to make his own oil paint. Pretty soon I was making it. It never occurred to me that a professional artist would go and buy his own tubes of paint. He used to say, "I wouldn't use that shit --" [both laugh]There used to be a firm still in existence, named (?) & Spearles (I couldn't find these company names).

PC: Oh yes.

LB: For dry color. And it's like a big retail he said, "I went there in the beginning to buy powdered yellow ochre." Sounds real but when you buy in quantity these days it's just sort of like a jobber. So anyway, it was he who suggested it was something to do; there was no other job. So we did it, and I went peddling the paint from studio to studio. That's how I had to meet all these guys --

PC: Oh, and one artist would pass you on to another --

LB: Yeah. Like Leon Kroll was at the Academy. So I called on him. He bought my first --

PC: What colors did you make?

LB: We made a palette of about eighteen colors. We had a little hand-printed label. Somebody sent me a tube recently. I have it wrapped in cotton. An old, old thing, I think it's at least -- see, actually my whole life I've only had this one job; that was the only job I ever -- then I went into business and have been an entrepreneur all my life [he laughs]. So that was the shop. First, I think, it measured six feet by eighteen; and with a little window. The biggest studio I had there -- this is how I figured out the square feet, and actually measured 22 feet by 27. And we had to move because it was getting small. So I went to see a real estate man and he said, "How many square feet do you need?" And I really don't know. I said, "How do you get square feet?" So he told me. (both laugh) So we moved up to 16th Street. And that building is -- I consider it the spiritual home of Bocour Colors. Because now there's a luxury-type apartment there. We had a very - you see, actually it was a kind of a crazy part of my life. In a sense, it wasn't a business, and I wasn't an artist, as a way of life. And no money -- God Almighty, you'd make $12 or $15 -- The guys on the Project, the WPA (Works Project Administration) started, see, and that was a very interesting experience -- they were getting $23.86 a week. I was making maybe $12 a week. Then I got involved for a short period with the Treasury Relief Art Project. That was the project for the public buildings -- the murals and all that. But that was a short-lived thing.

PC: What was that about? I mean, what did you have to do with it?

LB: We made paint for them and certain colors that they specified to make pictures.

Source: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-leonard-bocour-12884

See also

• Acrylic paint
• Artist
• Painter
• Painting
• Sam Golden

External links

• Leonard Bocour @ Wikipedia
• Oral history interview with Leonard Bocour, 1978 June 8