Nek Chand Saini - The Rock Garden

Nek Chand Saini (1924 – 2015) was a self-taught Indian artist, known for building the Rock Garden of Chandigarh, an eighteen-acre sculpture garden in the city of Chandigarh.
The Rock Garden is one of the most famous sites in India. Chand, its creator, died in 2015, but it is still visited by millions of people every year.
In his spare time, Chand began collecting materials from demolition sites around the city. He recycled these materials into his own vision of the divine kingdom of Sukrani, choosing a gorge in a forest near Sukhna Lake for his work. The gorge had been designated as a land conservancy, a forest buffer established in 1902 that nothing could be built on. Chand's work was illegal, but he was able to hide it for eighteen years before it was discovered by the authorities in 1975. By this time, it had grown into a 13-acre (5.3 ha) complex of interlinked courtyards, each filled with hundreds of pottery-covered concrete sculptures of dancers, musicians, and animals. Made from recycled materials, Chand built up the mass with a cement and sand mix before adding a final coating of smoothly burnished pure cement combined with waste materials such as broken glass, bangles, crockery, mosaic and iron-foundry slag.His work was in serious danger of being demolished, but he was able to get public opinion on his side, and in 1986 the park was inaugurated as a public space. Wikipedia

LeRoy Neiman

LeRoy Neiman (LeRoy Joseph Runquist), (born June 8, 1921, St. Paul, Minn.—died June 20, 2012, New York, N.Y.) American artist who achieved tremendous popularity and commercial success through his vividly coloured impressionistic paintings that documented public life. Neiman, who was best known as a sports artist, worked with pen and ink, felt-tip markers, watercolours, and enamel house paint, which he applied in rapid strokes. His flamboyant image, characterized by white suits, a huge handlebar mustache, and an ever-present cigar, was as recognizable as his painting style. 

 After serving in World War II as a cook and a painter of stage sets, Neiman studied (1946–50) on the GI Bill at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and taught fashion illustration and figure drawing there during the following decade. He also sketched for magazine fashion ads, but his big break came in 1954 when Hugh Hefner recruited him for Playboy magazine. This began Neiman’s 50-year career as a pinup illustrator.

 Neiman frequently sketched or painted while positioned on the sidelines of sporting events, including Super Bowls and boxing matches. He covered the Olympics five times, beginning with the 1960 Olympic Winter Games (Squaw Valley, Calif.), and was named an official artist for the Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y. (1980), and in Sarajevo, Yugos. (now in Bosnia and Herzegovina; 1984), and for the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Incredibly prolific, Neiman also rendered portraits of celebrities (including boxer Muhammad Ali, quarterback Joe Namath, maestro Leonard Bernstein, and poet Marianne Moore) and historical events, including the 1980 Democratic National Convention, for which he was the official artist. His memoir, All Told: My Art and Life Among Athletes, Playboys, Bunnies, and Provocateurs, was published in the weeks before his death.(Encyclopædia Britannica)

Mixed-Media