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Lawrence H. Lebduska

American painter and decorator, 1894–1966

BiographyBorn in Baltimore, Maryland, Lebduska moved with his family to Leipzig, Germany, as a boy. He was trained in stained glass production in Leipzig and initially took up painting as a hobby. He won an award for his painting Bit of Bohemia and began to study decoration with Joseph Svoboda in Chrudim, Bohemia, as a young man. In 1912, Lebduska returned to Baltimore and relocated to New York the following year. He was commissioned to paint murals by the decorator Elsie de Wolfe. He submitted his work to group shows in New York. Lebduska's flat and colorful depictions of farms and animals attracted the attention of dealers and collectors who were embracing folk art and Americana in greater numbers in the 1930s. He was quite successful in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but was largely forgotten during the second World War. Illness and alcoholism plagued him through the 1950s. Dealers revived interest in Lebduska's work in the 1960s, and he took up painting again at that time.

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