Julien Levy:
Portrait of an Art Gallery
Curated by Ingrid Schaffner and Lisa Jacobs
Manuel Mendive, #1 de la serie Orichas ( #1 from the series Orichas), 2002, Screenprint.
Elio Rodríguez Valdes, The Temptation of the Joint Venture de la serie Las Perlas de tu Boca (from the series The Pearls of your Mouth), 1995, Screenprint.
Choco (Eduardo Roca Salasar), Babalú, 1999, Collagraph.
José Julián Aguilera, La Trova (The Trova), 1968/2000, Woodcut.
Juan Roberto Diago Durruthy, No me pises (Don't Step on me), 2002, graphite and white chalk drawing.
Marta María Pérez Bravo, Recuerdos de Nuestro Bebé (Memories of Our Baby), n.d., Screenprint.
Ibrahim Miranda, Sin Título (Untitled), 1999, Woodcut.
Manuel Mendive, La Familia (The Family), 1998, Screenprint.
Alexis Esquivel, Sin Título #1 (Untitled #1), 2003, Charcoal on paper
Armando Posse, Sin Título (Untitled), 1968, Wood engraving.
Raúl Alfaro Torres, Cuarto Salón Independiente (Fourth Independent Salon), 1982, Woodcut.
Rafael Queneditt, Elebwá (Elegguá), 1970, Blind embossment in metal cut
Julien Levy: Portrait of an Art Gallery, the exhibition and catalogue are a provisional portrait of the Julien Levy Gallery, a driving force during one of the most dynamic periods in American art history. Opening in 1931 in the midst of the Depression, and closing in 1949 with the country on the verge of postwar prosperity, Levy’s gallery was in operation during precisely those years of transition when the center of the cultural avant-garde moved from Paris to New York, a haven for exiles and later the hub of the new school of Abstract Expressionism. As a champion of Surrealism, experimental film, and photography, Levy was a conduit for vital aesthetic changes originating in Europe.
This portrait is populated by many figures on shifting cultural grounds, and encompasses diverse objects, events, performances and experiments. It evokes the dynamism of a vital period by profiling an influential participant. A list of just some of the artist to whom Levy gave the first New York exhibitions illustrates what a remarkable eye and mind he had: Eugene Berman, Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Alberto Giacometti, Frida Kahlo, Leonid, Rene Magritte, and Pavel Tchelitchew. He was known primarily as the New York dealer for Surrealism, along with its ancillaries Neo Romanticism and Magic Realism. But Levy also presented exhibitions of Cubism, Machine Abstraction, Social Realism, decorative arts, theatre posters, and cartoons.
WORKS
90, plus a selection of vintage films
DIMENSIONS
8 x 10 to 30 x 40 (inches)
20.32 x 25.4 to 76.2 x 101,6 (cm)
SPACE REQUIREMENTS
450 linear feet (137.16 linear meters)
INQUIRIES
exhibitions@curatorial.org
626.577.0044
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Julien Levy (1906–1981) was an art dealer and owner of Julien Levy Gallery in New York City, important as a venue for Surrealists, avant-garde artists, and American photographers in the 1930s and 1940s.
Levy was born in New York. After studying museum administration at Harvard under Paul J. Sachs, Levy dropped out, traveled to Paris by boat, and befriended Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, and Berenice Abbott, through whom he came into possession of a portion of Eugène Atget's personal archive. In Paris, he also met his future wife, Joella Haweis, daughter of artist and writer Mina Loy.
At some point in his life, Julien Levy remarried to surrealist artist Muriel Streeter.
Back in New York, Levy worked briefly at the Weyhe Gallery before establishing his own New York gallery at 602 Madison Avenue in 1931. Concentrating at first on photography, he staged Man Ray's first major show, introduced Henri Cartier-Bresson to the US, and promoted many other European and American figures. On January 29th, 1932, there came the landmark multi-media Surrealist exhibition of the work of Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, and the introduction of Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory (which Levy owned). He also championed the surrealist work of Leon Kelly. This exhibition marks the first in New York to display the works of members of the official surrealist group.
In 1937, the gallery moved to 15 East 57th Street, where Levy mounted the first solo exhibition of the work of Frida Kahlo, November 1 to 15, 1938. From 1943 to 1949, the gallery was located at 42 East 57th Street. In 1945, Arshile Gorky had his first solo show there. In 1947, Paul Delvaux had an exhibition of paintings, which was well-received by critics.
After closing the gallery, Levy taught at Sarah Lawrence College and State University of New York at Purchase. Levy's books include Memoir of an Art Gallery and Surrealism'.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Berenice Abbot, Manuel Alvarez-Bravo, Amero, Salvador Dali, Nusch Eluard, Max Ernst, Meret Oppenheim, Louis Aragon, Jean-Eugene-Auguste Atget, John Atherton, Herbert Bayer, Jonathan Levy Bayer, Eugene Berman, Ilse Bing, Peter Blume, Brassai, Victor Brauner, Andre Breton, Fancis Brugiere, Luis Bunuel, Paul Cadmus, Milton Caniff, Leonora Carrington, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Giorgio De Chirico, William N. Copley, Dorothea Tanning, Joseph Cornell, Arthur Cravan, Imogen Cunningham, Paul Delvaux, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Eluard, Walker Evans, Max Ewing, Leonor Fini, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, David Hare, Frida Kahlo, Gertrude Kasebier, Andre Kertesz, Fernand Leger, Man Ray, among many others.
PUBLICATION
Julien Levy: Portrait of an Art Gallery
Edited by Ingrid Schaffer and Lisa Jacob
(The MIT Press; 1st edition, November 13, 1998)