Leon Oks – Circle Foundation for the Arts

Leon Oks is one of the world's most acclaimed contemporary artists. Not yet old enough to really understand what he saw, Leon Oks looked at the world and was captivated by the beauty around him. These all touched his little boy’s heart, and he knew even then that he was imbued with a passion for creating art.

Many European publishers of art anthologies have included examples of the art of Leon Oks' in their compendiums of significant historical paintings of the past 5 centuries. The top six museums worldwide have acquired his art for their permanent collections.

Leon Oks has been awarded First place awards in numerous international art competitions. In December 2012, he was personally invited by the organizers of the prestigious World of art Showcase, an international expo held at the Wynn Resort, Las Vegas. The artist was one of top six internationally acclaimed artists.

Leon Oks works in several styles that reflect the uniqueness of his experience and the complexity of his creative process. In a bittersweet nostalgia of his years in the Ukraine, Leon Oks is able to retrieve the sweetness and ignore the bitterness; his paintings capture these memories with hopefulness and joy.

"It is important to me that my viewers, patrons and collectors, in a simple, way, get pure enjoyment and pleasure from viewing and living with my paintings."

Leon Oks was born in 1939 in Ukraine (former Soviet Union) and currently keeps his studio in Buffalo Grove, Illinois.

"I paint for the satisfaction of the created work. It is important for me that my audience, in a very simple, perhaps old-fashioned way, gets pure enjoyment and pleasure from viewing and living with my paintings. This speaks to the power of art to transcend the troubles and realities of life."