Myron Lechay American, 1898-1972
"Little is known about Myron Lechay except that he was a Russian immigrant, had studied under Robert Henri and George Bellows, and that he believed deeply in the promise of the new art movement of the 1930s. He was a modernist in aesthetic practice and social outlook, befriended a local Black poet, Marcus Christian, and became a critic of Jim Crow. Ultimately, he left the closed society of New Orleans for the skyscrapers of New York, lingering just long enough to become the major cause célèbre of the Louisiana project... Lechay was an artist whose work... bore the unmistakable stamp of professional skill."
-Richard Megraw, Confronting Modernity: Art and Society in Louisiana (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), pp. 123 & 126.
Myron Lechay was born in Russia and emigrated to the US in the early 20th century, settling in Louisiana. He was an outspoken supporter of the arts - chairing the New Orleans chapter of the American Artists' Congress and working with the WPA's easel division. He was as dedicated to building a diverse, supportive artistic community in Louisiana as he was to painting (Megraw, Confronting Modernity, p. 125).
In New York Lechay exhibited at Spanierman Gallery, Walter Wickiser Gallery, and other institutions. A review of a 1996 solo show in NY described how "[Lechay] became associated with Stuart Davis and other American modernists in the twenties and developed a style similar to Milton Avery's, using broad, thinly applied areas of color."