When most people hear the name Gray Foy, they think of Leo Lerman, the cultured writer and editor who worked for Condé Nast. The two men were a couple for 48 years, but it was Lerman who had the high profile. Foy was an artist. Born in Dallas, Texas, in 1922, he grew up in Los Angeles where he studied art and theater design, and then specialized in drawing. Early in his career Foy created works of meticulous surrealism, influenced by Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst. Later he focused on botanical and geological subjects. Reviewing a Foy exhibition in 2008, a critic for The New York Times described his pencil drawings as “scrambled, congested, Dalí-like compositions of body parts, still-life, architecture, and landscape made with unbelievable refinement and microscopic detailing.” Foy, who died in 2012 at the age of 90, described his art as “hyper-realism.” The Menil exhibition brings Foy back into the picture. —Laura Jacobs