Photos below: (From top to bottom) (1)Man Builder Destroyer by Leza Lidow (2)Woman by Leza Lidow (wrapped and tied in shipping paper from the back) (3)Woman by Leza Lidow (wrapped and tied in shipping paper).
Photos courtesy of Leza Lidow.

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Social issues remain the focus of Leza’s work today including poignant visual interpretations about topics such as the environment, cloning and man vs woman in their never ending sexual politics.

One example is her work titled The Chess Set (The Eternal Battle of the Sexes). It is composed of life-size figures, half female and half male taking up a space of 24 feet by 24 feet.

Leza’s work has a surrealist bent to it drawing from her extensive international background which includes having studied in Paris. You can see the path Leza Lidow’s artistic path has taken by going to www.lezalidow.com

Her next solo exhibition will be September 2, 2004 at the Museum of Contemporary History/Moscow.

Leza and I met in a unique way. In 1980 I had been on a mannequin research adventure. I went to New York to the National Association of Display Industry market week to view the latest line of mannequins presented by the various mannequin manufacturers.

On my flight back to Los Angeles, I engaged in a lively conversation with the man sitting next to me, relating my quest to discover the history of display mannequins. At the end of the flight, we exchanged cards; George Wachter worked at the New York branch of Sotheby’s.

He mentioned he had someone he thought I should meet, would I mind if I gave that person my phone number? A few days later I received a call from Leza Lidow. She extended an invitation to me to come for lunch at her home.

I was living in Manhattan Beach at the time in an aging clapboard “shack” on the Strand with a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean. Just before the wrecking ball took it down, it was used in the movie Tequilla Sunrise as Mel Gibson’s home where he courted Michelle Pfieffer; steamy hot tub and all.

Downstairs I had a classic Mathushek upright piano, which in the 1970s Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys used to pound up a storm on, which gave it extra sentimental value.

Above the piano was a photo I had taken of a mannequin in a display window on Rodeo Dr. in Beverly Hills. The female mannequin was white with what looked like a black net painted all over it face, hands, legs and all. The mannequin was trapped in a net. It was eerie yet at the same time enticing in an artistic and surrealistic way. I never displayed my mannequin photography; this was the sole photo I had framed and hung up for view.

Leza gave me the directions to her home. Eventually I found the gates to Leza and her husband Eric’s home. I rang the doorbell. Leza answered the door. Upon entering the foyer the first object which struck me was a mannequin, most definitely an Adel Rootstein model.

It was a luxuriant lounging figure displayed on a large side table. I was immediately drawn to the figure. Leza had painted her as though she was a package. She was painted with images of wrapping paper, string and postage stamps enveloping her entire body. I was at a loss for words.

After our informal introductions Leza offered to take me to her art studio. I immediately bonded with her artwork.

One male mannequin was titled “Man Builder Destroyer.” Leza’s storytelling about the never-ending understanding and misunderstanding of male-female relationships was something I keyed into instantaneously.

Eventually she took me into a room that contained a mannequin that literally made me stop in my tracks. There was the mannequin I had photographed on Rodeo Drive!

It was the one mannequin photo with a place of honor above my Mathushek piano. I got goose bumps. She was the artist who had cast a ‘painterly” net on the mannequin I had photographed one late evening.

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