Eugène Leroy @demischdanant (1910-2000) Eugène Leroy is an important French painter of the twentieth century, who lived and worked in the north of France. Leroy painted prolifically for decades, developing his work in relative geographic and artistic isolation. In 1957, he was awarded the Emile-Othon Friesz Prize. He was not involved in the Parisian art scene and did not have specific ties to any movement or style of the era. Perhaps as a result of this, Eugène Leroy was not commercially successful until the early 1980s. In 1983, German art dealer Michael Werner began to exhibit his work internationally under the influence of painter Georg Baselitz, who had discovered Leroy’s work in Paris during the early 1960s. Leroy’s paintings are usually described as Expressionist or Neo-Expressionist and are mainly recognized by his use of an impressive impasto technique. Sometimes spending years on a single painting, Leroy would cover the canvas with multiple layers of paint to create a crust of colors, where the subject is almost sculpted out of the thickness of the paint.