Leonid Steele

During recovery and service in Siberia he began studying plein air painting with Evgeny Kudriavtsev – then director of the important State Tretyakov Gallery and student of legendary turn-of-the-century landscape painter Isaak Levitan.

In addition, his paintings and his story were featured in numerous top Soviet mass media publications - such as Ogoniok, Rabotnitsa, Pravda, Izvestia, Sovetskaya Kultura, Smena, and Ukraina - as well as a variety of regional and local newspapers, radio programs and TV shows.

The artist became a friend of many Soviet celebrities over the years, including Leonid Utyosov, Dmitri Shostakovich, David Oistrakh, Yuri Gagarin, Pavel Popovich and Alexander Vertinsky.

He was also an early supporter of a prominent and widely influential protest songwriter of the 1960s, Bulat Okudzhava, whose public appearances were restricted by Soviet authorities at the time.

Steele is featured alongside such important painters of the period as Aleksandr Gerasimov, Aleksandr Deyneka, Isaak Brodsky, Aleksei Gritsai, Akhmed Kitaev, Gely Korzhev, Yuri Kugach, Aleksandr Laktionov, Oleg Lomakin, Konstantin Maksimov, Petr Maltsev, Dmitri Nalbandyan, Georgy Nissky, Yuri Neprintsev, Vasili Nechitailo, Yuri Pimenov, Arkadi Plastov, Yuri Podlyaski, Vladimir Serov, Boris Shcherbakov, Dementi Shmarinov, Valentin Sidorov, Pavel Sokolov-Skalya, Vladimir Stozharov, Nikolai Timkov, the Tkachev brothers, Andrei Tutunov, Boris Ugarov, Edvard Vyrzhikovski, Tatiyana Yablonskaya and Dmitri Zhulinski.

Leonid Mikhailovich Steele continued to paint in the United States - in California - exhibiting the same passion and energy he has shown since his youth.