Lou Beach
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Lou Beach (nee Andrzej Lubicz-Ledóchowski) was born in Göttingen, Germany in 1947, the son of Polish parents displaced by the Second World War. The family emigrated to Rochester, NY in 1951 where Lou attended public schools and junior college. He travelled to California in 1968 where he began his artistic career by making assemblage art and studying the Surrealists, visiting galleries and museums, and creating collages from pictures cut from old Life magazines. He worked during this time in bookstores, as a delivery man, moved furniture, and ran a punch press and forklift. A road trip across country, ostensibly to travel on to Europe from the East Coast, brought him to Boston where he lived from 1972 until 1979, much of the time as the sexton at the famous Arlington St. Church. There he created collages in earnest and had his first one man show at the newly established Boston Center For The Arts, as well as being hired for several illustration assignments.

Returning to L.A. he reacquainted himself with old friends, one of whom was prominent in the music business, and was asked to illustrate a record album cover. This was the beginning of a long and fruitful career as a record cover illustrator as well as an editorial illustrator, making pictures for magazines and newspapers. He continued making art, if not showing in galleries, by creating collages as gifts and for his personal enjoyment. Not until his grown children (Alpha and Sam), both fine artists, encouraged him to seriously concentrate on making art again did he embark on reestablishing himself in that realm. An nearly sold-out show at Billy Shire Fine Arts in 2009 saw the reemergence of Lou in the world of fine art along with subsequent showings at Nickelodeon, La Luz de Jesus, OffRamp Gallery (all in Los Angeles), Adventureland (Chicago), and Firecat Projects (Chicago) and a large representation of work at the Metro Show in NYC 2015.