In the catalogue essay for the exhibition, Pete Hamill writes:In his paintings in watercolor and oil, Levine presented people with souls, the anonymous laborers who are the true infantry of a city like New York. In their best days, not long ago, they worked in sweatshops through frigid winters and played most passionately in the summer sweat and sand of Coney Island. Some of us had the great good fortune to grow up among them, in all seasons, and can hear their voices still. The exhibition, 34 paintings and 12 caricature drawings, shows the mastery of David Levine (1926 – 2009), whom Forum Gallery represented from 1965 until his passing. Painting was his passionate concern throughout his career, even as he became the foremost caricaturist of the Twentieth Century, illuminating every issue of The New York Review of Books and countless covers and stories in virtually every important magazine and newspaper in America for decades. The empathetic approach of his paintings, the ability and instinct he had to imbue each subject with human dignity; coupled with the rapier-like wit and insight of his caricature drawings combined to make an art career like no other, a personal history rich in reverence, color and ironic humor. David Levine was born in Brooklyn, New York, December 20, 1926. His father was a tailor and his mother a nurse; but David Levine was a prodigious art talent from childhood. Starting as an animation artist, he studied painting at Pratt Institute and Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, and later, at Hans Hoffmann’s New York school. His caricatures began with a job at Esquire in the 1960’s, and at the same time, he began to show his paintings with Davis Gallery in New York. Today, his paintings are found in major museums and private collections throughout the United States, and in many collections in France, England and Germany owing to exhibitions of his paintings in important galleries in those countries. David Levine’s caricature drawings are recognized and well known throughout the world.
↧