The Belgian painter and graphic artist Pierre Alechinsky was born in Brussels in 1927 and currently lives and works in Paris. After studying book illustration and typography at the Ecole Superieure d'Architecture et d'Art Decoratif in Brussels, he joined the artist association Jeune Peinture Belge. In 1949, Alechinsky and Christian Dotremont founded the Belgian wing of Cobra, an international movement that brought artists from Denmark, Belgium, and Holland together in a search for new means of expression. Inspired by Marxism, Cobra artists by-and-large rejected Western culture and aesthetics, specifically the surrealism of André Breton. Taking their lead instead from primitive art and children's drawings, as well as the art of Joan Miró and Paul Klee, they focused on spontaneity and experiment. The Belgian members were particularly interested in writing as a pictorial method of expression. This interest is evidenced in Alechinsky's works of the 1950s in which he used an overall structure of tightly interwoven elements that resemble scribbling.

After breaking off from with the Cobra group in 1951, Alechinsky moved to Paris to study drawing and the following year went to Japan to learn calligraphy and oriental painting. This experience with Eastern art and culture had a great impact on his work. He begun making large works on paper in India ink, by first spreading the paper on the floor and then moving around and pouring the ink onto the surface. During the 1960s, he made large paintings in oil and acrylic, close to Nordic Expressionism. He also often combined painting and drawing by placing his images at center surrounded by a border containing black-and-white ink drawing that evoked the idea of writing. From the early 1970s onward, he reversed this technique and used ink in the center, reserving color for the edges.

Three White Leaves, 1983, from the Bell Gallery collection, utilizes this latter method. A black-and-white drawing of leaves is mounted on a canvas and enclosed by a border painted in rich, vivid colors. Alechinsky's use of paper, brushes, ink, and a quick-drying acrylic heightens the spontaneity of imagery. In addition, his subjects--whether plants, clouds, and birds, or figures, monsters, and grotesque masks--are presented in a highly rhythmic way, increasing the overall energy and liveliness of the works. Alechinsky often used old or found pieces of paper, such as legal documents, invoices, and bond, inscribing marks on them. In all of his works, he continued the earlier method of combining written and pictorial signs in order to achieve expressive power. In this respect, the idea of writing joined with the physicality of paint remained a constant trait of his work.

Three White Leaves was included in the major retrospective of Alechinsky's work that was organized by the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris in 1998. The exhibition subsequently traveled to the Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Oostende, Belgium, and IVAM Centre in Valencia, Spain.

The painting was a gift to the Bell Gallery from Robert F. Ebin (class of 1962) and Family.