Creator Record

Metadata

Name

Levitt, Alfred

Dates & places of birth and death

b. 1894
d. 2000

Nationality

American, born Ukraine

Notes

Alfred Levitt was born in the Ukraine in 1894 and immigrated to New York City in 1911 with his family. He studied and modeled for Robert Henri at the Ferrer School in the late 1920s. In the 1930s Levitt studied at the Art Students League and with Hans Hofmann.
Levitt exhibited widely throughout the 1940s. His first solo exhibition was held at Babcock Galleries in 1945. His work was also included in exhibitions at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Jewish Museum in New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He had another solo exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1947.
He spent his summers at the popular artist colony in Gloucester, Massachusettes from 1945-1950, often exhibiting in shows in Cape Ann and Gloucester. These summers were spent as a part of a group of painters that were adapting Cubism to American themes including Milton Avery, George Constant, Stuart Davis, and others.
From 1949-1951, Levitt lived in Europe where he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. Upon his return in November of 1951, Levitt exhibited his work at the Brooklyn Museum and the Whitney, and others. He held a fellowship at MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire in 1956.
From 1959-1962 Levitt returned to France where he opened École de peinture moderne de Province in St. Rémy, and taught painting and drawing. In France, Levitt became interested in Prehistoric cave art. He documented and photographed the caves in Southern France and northern Spain for which he was named Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1975.
Much of Levitt's work are landscapes and still lifes that feature a pronounced contour line forming broad facets drawn from Cubism. His later work engages with abstraction, flat geometric patterns are created on the surface of the canvas. Levitt's work is held in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum and the University of Mary Washington Galleries.