Jack Levine

(American, 1915–2010)

Jack Levine was an American painter best known for his bitingly satirical and Expressionistic portraits of politicians, society women, policeman, and other members of the social fabric. Born on January 3, 1915 in Boston, MA to Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, Levine went on to study at Harvard University under Denman W. Ross where he was introduced to and influenced by the works of Chaïm Soutine, Georges Rouault, and Oskar Kokoschka. His first exhibition was at The Museum of Modern Art in New York where he showed the paintings Card Game and Brain Trust, both of which were based on his observations of Boston street scenes. Levine’s interest in distorting reality was furthered by study of El Greco’s paintings while in Europe on a Fulbright Grant in 1951. The DC Moore Gallery in New York has represented the estate of Levine, and today his works can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others. Levine died on November 8, 2010 in New York, NY.