David Levine on the Beach at Coney Island
With deep regret, Forum Gallery notes the passing of David Levine on December 28, 2009. His contribution to the arts was extraordinary.
An obituary appeared in the December 29, 2009 New York Times.
David Levine was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1926 and studied at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School, Pratt Institute, the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, and the Eighth Street School of New York with Hans Hofmann.
For over four decades, Levine entertained readers of "The New York Review of Books" with his often-satirical portraiture of public figures. One of America’s most celebrated artists, David Levine’s many awards began with the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 1955 and have included the Isaac Maynard, Julius Hallgarten and Thomas B. Clarke awards, all from the National Academy of Design; the George Polk Memorial Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Childe Hassam Purchase Prize (American Academy of Arts and Letters), the John Pike Memorial Prize and the Gold Medal of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1993. Internationally, David Levine has received the French Legion of Honor award and the Thomas Nast Award in Landau, Germany.
David Levine exhibited with the Davis Gallery in New York from 1954 to 1963, and soon after joined Forum Gallery. The gallery presented twenty one-person exhibitions for David Levine until his passing in 2009. While representing the estate of the Artist, Forum Gallery presented "David Levine: The World He Saw" in 2014 and has continued to include his work in several group exhibitions. Solo presentations for David Levine have been held at several prominent museums including the Pierpont Morgan Library and American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.; the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, CA, the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, WA, and the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, GA. David Levine has been included in solo presentations abroad in Austria, Israel, Munich, Stuttgart, Paris, and in Oxford, England.
Six books have been published of David Levine’s art, including "The Arts of David Levine" (Knopf, New York, 1978) and "Pens and Needles" (Gambit, Boston, 1969). David Levine lived and worked in Brooklyn, New York, until his death on December 28, 2009.
Works by David Levine are represented in collections that include The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum (NY); the Library of Congress, and Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.); the Cleveland Museum of Art (OH); the Columbus Museum (GA); the National Portrait Gallery of England (London); and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (CA).