Leo Katz was a Czechoslovakian-American painter, print maker and muralist who worked in a Modern style. Born in Roznau, Czechoslovakia, Katz studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Art in Munich. By the 1930s Katz was living in Los Angeles where he taught art at the Chouinard School. He worked for the WPA Federal Art Project and infamously painted a mural in the Wiggins Trade School (now the Los Angeles Trade-Technical School) that was removed in 1935 due to its nudity and violent content. Katz exhibition in the 1934 Painters & Sculptors of Los Angeles show.

Katz lived in Hampton, VA in the 1940s, Atlanta, GA in the 1950s and New York in the 1960s where he remained until his death in 1982.