Joseph “Joe” Leon Lasker (1919–2015) was born in New York to Romanian immigrants. In high school, he entered a painting competition sponsored by the Treasury Department and won commissions for still-displayed murals in the Calumet, MI and Millbury, MA post offices. He graduated from the Cooper Union art school.
Lasker was the last living member of the great realists — including Edward Hopper, John Sloan, and Raphael Soyer — who wrote for Reality, the mid-50s polemical journal that argued against non-representational art. Lasker’s work has been featured at many national and international shows, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Whitney Museum of American Art; National Academy of Design; Barbican, London, England; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; and the Cincinnati Art Museum.
The New York Times art critic Howard DeVree wrote of Lasker, "There is a psychological warmth and penetration in the work...especially stimulating canvasses...marvellously effective...a tour de force." His oil paintings and other depictions of cityscapes, landscapes, portraits, fantasies, interiors, and still lifes hang in the permanent collections of the Whitney, Smithsonian, Hirshhorn, Philadelphia Art Museum, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and other museums.
He illustrated and/or wrote children's books, including American Library Association Notable Books Merry Ever After (1976) and The Boy Who Loved Music (1979) for Viking Press. His prizes include Prix de Rome and Guggenheim Fellowships and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Academy of Design, where he was National Academician and secretary.
