Leo Marchutz underlines the practice of learning through vision and how visually studying works of art by the great masters is an essential lesson students use to navigate through the art world.

A number of Leo Marchutz’s works portray biblical passages that speak of the pain of rejection, injustices among men, and imminent death.

In this excerpt, Leo Marchutz speaks to a question that seems particularly relevant in our present world — what's the purpose and value of art-making in the face of dire social, political and environmental crisis.

“Art is communication”- Leo Marchutz says – “and if the art is unable to communicate, well, then something is wrong…”

Leo Marchutz's characters or mountains or architecture are fluid, moving open volumes, totally connected with the outside, interwoven with the space they breath. In Leo Marchutz's work, inside and outside are One.

Copywork is more than a way to practice the techniques of master painters of the past. At the Marchutz School, it is how students find their place in the tradition of art and begin to assert themselves as artists.

"You must realize there are very few people who really see with their eyes, or who open their eyes, or who live by their eyes..."

The study of past artists was of great importance to Leo Marchutz and his students, and many of their conversations centered around the ways in which their own work could be bettered by contact with great works of the past.