The Great Secretariat

LeRoy Neiman (1921–2012) was an American painter, printmaker, and illustrator known for his vivid expressionist style and his close connection to sports, entertainment, travel, and public life. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, he grew up in the city’s Frog Town neighborhood and showed an early gift for drawing. After serving in World War II, he studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he later taught figure drawing and fashion illustration. Those foundations in draftsmanship, performance, and design remained central to his work, even as his career moved into a much broader public arena.

Neiman first gained major national visibility through his long association with Playboy, beginning in the 1950s, where his illustrations and “Man at His Leisure” series helped define his image as an artist of nightlife, luxury, travel, and modern culture. His work quickly expanded beyond magazine illustration into painting, printmaking, murals, and live event work. He became especially known for depicting athletes and major sporting events, including boxing, horse racing, football, basketball, golf, the Olympics, and the Kentucky Derby. Rather than painting sports as static portraiture, Neiman focused on speed, atmosphere, crowd energy, and the intensity of the moment.

Over the course of his career, Neiman became one of the most publicly recognized American artists of his generation. He was named official artist for multiple Olympic Games, created work connected to major cultural and sporting events, and portrayed figures across sports, politics, music, and entertainment. His paintings and prints are defined by saturated color, fast mark-making, and a sense of motion that makes the image feel as if it is still unfolding. While his work was often associated with popular culture, its staying power comes from how directly it captures the performance of modern life: the arena, the racetrack, the stage, the city, and the people who animate them.