Photograph courtesy of True Lives, American Documentary, Inc. and National Educational Telecommunications Association
Jack Levine was born in Boston’s South End slums in 1915. He began drawing at the age of eight at the community art center as did his friend Hyman Bloom, who would also go on to be a well-known artist. By 1929, Levine was studying with Dr. Denman Ross of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard. In 1935, Levine became employed as an artist in the Work Progress Administration (WPA). This endeavor supported him through the Depression; the vignettes of street life at that time filled his mind and would appear on his canvases as biting social commentary for the rest of his life.
Jack Levine’s The Feast of Reason (1937) was created for the WPA and catapulted the artist into national prominence when it was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. Levine was only 23 years old at the time. In 1939, he had the first of 3 one-person exhibitions at New York’s legendary Downtown Gallery owned by Edith Halpert.
Jack Levine’s social satire reflected the frustrations and injustices of the 1930’s. Levine once said of himself, “I am primarily concerned with the condition of man.” Many of his best paintings embody his hatred of war, inequality, and the hypocritical aspects of our society, thereby securing his position as one of America’s greatest Social Realists.
Moving to the Alan Gallery in 1953, he continued his satirical direction with the completion of the oil painting, The Gangsters Funeral (1952-53), purchased by the Whitney Museum of American Art. After his second exhibition at the Alan Gallery, Levine began work on 1932 (In Memory of George Grosz), one of a small number of works he produced relating to Nazism. Later works by Levine incorporated international subjects, such as The Spanish Prison (1959-1962), Panethnikon (1978) and The Arms Brokers (1982-83). In 1979, he was elected to the National Academy of Design and later became a full Academician in 1982.
Works by Jack Levine are included in many important museum collections, such as the Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum of Art; The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, OH; Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, ME; Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco; Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge; and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.