Film Art Sales
For over 28 years, Leslie Combemale has opened markets of fine art and collectibles to wider audiences. At the beginning of her career, there were only 5 galleries in the world that specialized in animation art. Almost no one knew anything about what production art was, nor had any understanding of how traditional animation was made. (This was before the real advent of computer and digital animation.)
Leslie worked to expand awareness about the history and process of traditional 2D animation art, often in interviews and articles in which she was quoted. As the market grew, she helped define the industry and retail animation art market by being on the Disney Advisory Board, which was made up of 10 galleries worldwide.
She represented art buyers at Sotheby’s and Christie’s auctions dedicated to film and animation art, notably the Who Framed Roger Rabbit auction, the Little Mermaid auction, the Beauty and the Beast, and the Star Trek auctions.
Her gallery ArtInsights was asked to redesign framing options for animation art being sold by Disney through both the Disney stores and independent galleries worldwide.
As the animation market has changed over the years, Leslie’s gallery has steadfastly maintained a high level of integrity, continuing to focus on collector education and targeted collection building.
Over 15 years ago, Leslie began expanding the gallery focus to film art, both production art used to make films, and campaign art used to make posters. Now a high priority is educating movie lovers who are discovering art is available from their favorite movies, either by artists who worked on the films themselves, by artists officially licensed by the studios, or by artists who created campaign art to promote those films. She is also a strong advocate for both traditional animation and traditionally illustrated movie posters, and builds art collections for clients both corporate and individual, with interests in those art genres.
She has:
filled a house in Geneva, Switzerland with over 50 pieces of art from The Little Mermaid
created a gallery of Star Wars originals as part of a restaurant in Japan
built a collection of film art based on The Art of John Alvin for a Sci-Fi museum in France
Curated and developed a comprehensive collection of iconic animation original art with over 350 cels for over 20 years with a collector in Maryland
Designed and commissioned a collection of original paintings, using film production artists, for the media library and home theater of a noted CEO in Florida