1. 1940

Oil on canvas
Ex-collection
The artist
Israel and Idee Levitan (gift from above) c. 1940 and her estate until 2004
Private collection until 2021

Exhibitions:

Pollock Matters , McMullen Museum of Art.  Landau, Ellen G.  Cernuschi, Claude,

McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College 2007 illustrated in color p. 173

An American abstract expressionist sculptor, Israel Levitan (1912 – 1982) was born in Lawrence, MA, the grandson of a rabbi, left home in his very early teens to travel. Eventually he lived for a year with the Blackfoot Indians in Montana and became blood brother to a chief and was given the name “Little Rock.” He then settled in Detroit, where he worked on the assembly line for the Chrysler Plant, and under the company’s sponsorship, became the Amateur Athletic Union Welterweight Boxing Champion. After taking classes at both Cass Tech and the Arts and Crafts School in Detroit, he was awarded a summer studies scholarship to attend the Art Institute of Chicago. His studies were interrupted by World War II. He joined the U.S. Navy (Marines) as a medical corpsman, where he traveled to the South Pacific. As well as becoming involved in physical therapy and rehabilitation, he drew many sketches of the surroundings and his Navy buddies, and was requested by his superiors to make anatomical sketches which were published and used by the Navy. As a result of his naval training and experience, Levitan became a qualified physiotherapist. He obtained a license to practice massage which he did for the rest of his life. After the war, Levitan moved to New York City. He first studied with Amédée Ozenfant, and then enrolled in Hans Hofmann’s school, where he met his wife, Idee, a painter and designer (and former student of Marcel Duchamp) where they met Krasner at the Hofmann’s studio At Hofmann’s suggestion (who told him his drawings were “popping off the page”), Levitan went to Paris, France, to study sculpture with Russian émigré Ossip Zadkine (1950-51). Before returning to New York, Levitan participated in a group show at the Musee des Beaux Arts in Paris. Back in New York, he set up studio on E. Ninth Street, and was quickly assimilated into the New York School avantgarde art scene. Before long he moved his studio to Tenth Street, where many cooperative galleries were and where many of the artists who showed in them lived. Levitan exhibited his work in several of these galleries, such as the Tanager, the Barone and others, along with such contemporaries as Gabriel Kohn, Raoul Hague, Sidney Geist, and Louise Nevelson.