Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 15

Jack Levine
American Modernist "Feast of Pure Reason" Aquatint Mezzotint Etching WPA Artist

1970

About the Item

Jack Levine, American, 1915–2010 The Feast of Pure Reason, 1970 Etching, mezzotint and aquatint on copper in black ink. 20 w. 25 in., sight overall: 27 x 31.75 in., matted. Depicting three figures smoking; signed in pencil lower right, edition: "Artist's Proof" lower left Provenance: from the estate of the late centenarian Joseph S. Blank, Jr., well known collector and board member of The Neuberger Museum of Art. In 1935, shortly after its formation, Levine joined the WPA’s Federal Art Project, where he was employed intermittently until 1939. In 1937, while with the WPA, Levine painted The Feast of Pure Reason, the work that catapulted him to fame. The painting, which depicted a politician, a policeman, and a ​“gentleman” of wealth, was interpreted by the press as an indictment of police corruption and its connection to wealth and organized crime gangsters. Born to Lithuanian Jewish parents, Levine grew up in the South End of Boston, where he observed a street life composed of European immigrants and a prevalence of poverty and societal ills, subjects which would inform his work. He first studied drawing with Harold K. Zimmerman from 1924-1931. At Harvard University from 1929 to 1933, Levine and classmate Hyman Bloom studied with Denman Ross. As an adolescent, Levine was already, by his own account, "a formidable draftsman". In 1932 Ross included Levine's drawings in an exhibition at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, and three years later bequeathed twenty drawings by Levine to the museum's collection. Levine worked in oil painting, gouache, watercolor, drawing, lithograph and etching prints. Levine's early work was most influenced by Bloom, German expressionist artists, such as George Grosz and Oskar Kokoschka, Chaim Soutine and Georges Rouault. Along with Bloom and Karl Zerbe, he became associated with the style known as Boston Expressionism. He was included in the show “American Modernism – Paintings from the Dr. and Mrs. Mark S. Kauffman Collection,” along with 30 leading masters of American modernism, which captured the essence of a revolutionary era in American art. As the 20th century began, American painters became increasingly involved in avant-garde developments in Europe. Different styles from international sources developed concurrently, making the years between the World Wars a dynamic period of artistic exchange and cathartic change. Faced with the fast-moving, machine-driven technology of the 20th century, American artists began to explore different ways of representing the world: through the influences of Cubism, structurally fracturing the picture plane into angular prisms, and through the expressionist application of bold, unnaturalistic color. Collectively, these first American modernist experiments with abstraction were to change the direction of the art world. Artists included were Stuart Davis, Lyonel Feininger, William Gropper, Robert Gwathmey, Jack Levine, William Meyerowitz, Abraham Rattner, Ben Shahn, Moses and Raphael Soyer, Konrad Cramer, Charles Sheeler, Abraham Walkowitz, and Max Weber. The exhibition also showed at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota and the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio. The Brooklyn Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (New York City), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Phillips Collection (Washington, DC), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, Minnesota), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City) are among the institutions holding works by Jack Levine.
  • Creator:
    Jack Levine (1915, American)
  • Creation Year:
    1970
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 27 in (68.58 cm)Width: 31.75 in (80.65 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
    image is great. margins where it was under mat have extensive toning. will be shipped without the mat. please see photos.
  • Gallery Location:
    Surfside, FL
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU3827220032
More From This SellerView All
  • Judaica Jewish Shtetl Etching Yeshiva Talmudic Study Vintage Chassidic Art Print
    By Paul Jeffay
    Located in Surfside, FL
    "Qui a raison?" Chassidic boy, Yeshiva student with open book. Judaica, Jewish scenes from a ghetto. Saul Yaffie, a.k.a. Paul Jeffay, (1898–1957) was a Scottish Jewish artist. Kno...
    Category

    20th Century Expressionist Interior Prints

    Materials

    Etching

  • Judaica Jewish Shtetl Etching Hasidic Rabbi at Study Vintage Chassidic Print
    By Paul Jeffay
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Older Chassidic rabbi learning with open book, Judaica, Jewish scenes from a ghetto. Saul Yaffie, a.k.a. Paul Jeffay, (1898–1957) was a Scottish Jewish artist. Known for his charmin...
    Category

    20th Century Expressionist Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Paper, Etching

  • Vintage Russian Ukrainian Soldiers in Forest Scene Judaica Lithograph Jewish Art
    By Anatoli Lvovich Kaplan
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Pencil signed and dated, Russian Soviet Judaica Lithograph. Anatoli Lwowitch Kaplan was a Russian painter, sculptor and printmaker, whose works often reflect his Jewish origins. His...
    Category

    Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Lithograph

  • Machpela Cave Chevron 1969 Israeli Judaica Lithograph Baruch Nachshon Chabad Art
    By Baruch Nachshon
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Baruch Nachshon, was born in Mandatory Palestine in 1939, in the city of Haifa. Nachshon began to paint in early childhood, and developed his relationship to art and to artists throu...
    Category

    1960s Modern Interior Prints

    Materials

    Lithograph

  • Chris Ware New Yorker Cartoonist Limited Edition Thanksgiving Print NYC
    By Chris Ware
    Located in Surfside, FL
    This is one print – printed in full color on 15" x 20" heavy cream-colored paper. It is from a limited edition series of 175, the portfolio is hand numbered and hand signed by Chris Ware. the individual prints are not. The page with the hand signature is included here as a photo for reference only it is not included in this sale. Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware (born December 28, 1967), is an American cartoonist known for his Acme Novelty Library series (begun 1994) and the graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (2000) and Building Stories (2012). His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. He tends to use a vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style. Ware often refers to himself in the publicity for his work in self-effacing, even withering tones. He is considered by some critics and fellow notable illustrators and writers, such as Dave Eggers, to be among the best currently working in the medium; Canadian graphic-novelist Seth has said, "Chris really changed the playing field. After him, a lot of [cartoonists] really started to scramble and go, 'Holy [expletive], I think I have to try harder.'" While still a sophomore at UT, Ware came to the attention of Art Spiegelman, who invited Ware to contribute to Raw, the influential anthology magazine Spiegelman was co-editing with Françoise Mouly. Ware has acknowledged that being included in Raw gave him confidence and inspired him to explore printing techniques and self-publishing. His Fantagraphics series Acme Novelty Library defied comics publishing conventions with every issue. Ware's art reflects early 20th-century American styles of cartooning and graphic design, shifting through formats from traditional comic panels to faux advertisements and cut-out toys. Stylistic influences include advertising graphics from that same era; newspaper strip cartoonists Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland) and Frank King (Gasoline Alley); Charles Schulz's post-WWII strip Peanuts and the cover designs of ragtime-era sheet music. Ware has spoken about finding inspiration in the work of artist Joseph Cornell and cites Richard McGuire's strip Here as a major influence on his use of non-linear narratives. He is one of the great practitioners who have elevated the graphic novel style along with, Shepard Fairey, Ben Katchor and Robert Crumb. Quimby the Mouse was an early character for Ware and something of a breakthrough. Rendered in the style of an early animation character like Felix the Cat, Quimby the Mouse is perhaps Ware's most autobiographical character. Ware's Building Stories was serialized in a host of different venues. It first appeared as a monthly strip in Nest Magazine. Installments later appeared in a number of publications, including The New Yorker, Kramer's Ergot, and most notably, the Sunday New York Times Magazine. Building Stories appeared weekly in the New York Times Magazine from September 18, 2005 until April 16, 2006. A full chapter was published in Acme Novelty Library, number 18. Another installment was published under the title "Touch Sensitive" as a digital app released through McSweeneys. The entire narrative was published as a boxed set of books by Pantheon in October 2012. Ware was commissioned by Chip Kidd to design the inner machinations of the bird on the cover of Haruki Murakami's novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. In 2011, Ware created the poster for the U.S. release of the 2010 Palme d'Or winning film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Awards and honors Over the years his work garnered several awards, including the 1999 National Cartoonists Society's Award for Best Comic Book for Acme Novelty Library and Award for Graphic Novel for Building Stories. Ware has won numerous Eisner Awards and multiple Harvey Awards. In 2002, Ware became the first comics artist to be invited to exhibit at Whitney Museum of American Art biennial exhibition. With Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Robert Crumb and Gary Panter, Ware was among the artists honored in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum in New York City, New York, from September 16, 2006 to January 28, 2007. His work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2006 and at the University of Nebraska's Sheldon Museum of Art, in 2007. Many famous artists have done covers for the New Yorker Magazine including, Saul Steinberg, Maira Kalman, Art Spiegelman, Francoise Mouly, Charles Addams, Peter Arno, Roz Chast, Ed Koren...
    Category

    Early 2000s American Modern Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Color

  • Girl in Ballerina Dress (Thonet Chair) Color Lithograph, American Modernist
    By Philip Pearlstein
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Girl in Ballerina Dress, c. 1970 Color lithograph printed on wove paper, hand signed in pencil and numbered 22/75, with the inkstamp of the publisher, Landfall Press, Chicago (they have published an eclectic list of many important artists including Christo, Judy Chicago, David Levinthal and Jack tworkov to name a few.) Philip Pearlstein is an influential American painter best known for Modernist Realism nudes. Cited by critics as the preeminent figure painter of the 1960s to 2000s, he led a revival in realist art. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus with paintings in the collections of over 70 public art museums. Philip M. Pearlstein was born on May 24, 1924 in Pittsburgh, PA. He attended Saturday morning classes at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art. In 1942, at the age of 18, two of his paintings won a national competition sponsored by Scholastic Magazine, and were reproduced in color in Life magazine. In 1942, he enrolled at Carnegie Institute of Technology's art school, in Pittsburgh, where he painted two portraits of his parents now held by the Carnegie Museum of Art, but after one year he was drafted by the US Army to serve during World War II. He was initially assigned to the Training Aids Unit at Camp Blanding, Florida, where he produced charts, weapon assembly diagrams and signs. In this role, he learned printmaking and the screenprinting process, and subsequently was stationed in Italy making road signs. While in Italy, he took in as much renaissance art as was accessible in Rome, Florence, Venice and Milan, and also produced numerous drawings depicting life in the Army. In 1946, sponsored by the GI Bill, he returned to Carnegie Institute, and first met Andy Warhol, who was attracted to Pearlstein because of his notoriety in the school, having been featured in Life magazine. During the summer of 1947, the three rented a barn as a summer studio. Immediately after graduating in June 1949 with a BFA, Pearlstein and Warhol moved to New York City, at first sharing an eighth-floor walkup tenement apartment on St. Mark's Place at Avenue A. He was eventually hired by Czech designer Ladislav Sutnar, mainly doing industrial catalog work, while Warhol immediately found work illustrating department store catalogs presaging Pop Art. In April 1950, they moved to 323 W. 21st Street, into an apartment rented by Franziska Marie Boas, who ran a dance class on the other side of the room. During this time, Pearlstein painted a portrait of Warhol, now held by the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1950, Philip Pearlstein married Dorothy Cantor, with Andy Warhol in the wedding party...
    Category

    1970s American Realist Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Lithograph

You May Also Like
  • Synagogue Duke's Palace Houndsditch by Th. Sunderland after Pugin & Rowlandson
    By Thomas Rowlandson
    Located in Middletown, NY
    A faithful architectural rendering of the earliest Ashkenazi synagogue constructed in London; built about 1690, and subsequently destroyed in the Blitz, 1941. London: Rudolph Ackerm...
    Category

    Early 19th Century English School Interior Prints

    Materials

    Aquatint, Engraving, Handmade Paper

  • Dornröschen (Sleeping Beauty.)
    By Heinrich Vogeler
    Located in Storrs, CT
    Reif 20.IIc(of e). 10 5/8 x 9 3/4 (sheet 19 X 12 3/4). Slight scattered foxing in the margins, away from the image. A rich, tonal impression printed on sturdy wove paper. Proof aside...
    Category

    Late 19th Century Jugendstil Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Fiberglass, Drypoint, Etching, Aquatint

  • Don Juan
    By Louis Icart
    Located in Missouri, MO
    Aquating Engraving Image Size: approx. 20 1/4 x 13 3/8 Framed Size: 28 x 20.5 inches Pencil Signed Lower Right Louis Justin Laurent Icart was born in Toulouse in 1890 and died in Paris in 1950. He lived in New York City in the 1920s, where he became known for his Art-Deco color etchings of glamourous women. He was first son of Jean and Elisabeth Icart and was officially named Louis Justin Laurent Icart. The use of his initials L.I. would be sufficient in this household. Therefore, from the moment of his birth he was dubbed 'Helli'. The Icart family lived modestly in a small brick home on rue Traversière-de-la-balance, in the culturally rich Southern French city of Toulouse, which was the home of many prominent writers and artists, the most famous being Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Icart entered the l'Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Toulouse in order to continue his studies for a career in business, particularly banking (his father's profession). However, he soon discovered the play writings of Victor Hugo (1802-1885), which were to change the course of his life. Icart borrowed whatever books he could find by Hugo at the Toulouse library, devouring the tales, rich in both romantic imagery and the dilemmas of the human condition. It was through Icart's love of the theater that he developed a taste for all the arts, though the urge to paint was not as yet as strong for him as the urge to act. It was not until his move to Paris in 1907 that Icart would concentrate on painting, drawing and the production of countless beautiful etchings, which have served (more than the other mediums) to indelibly preserve his name in twentieth century art history. Art Deco, a term coined at the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, had taken its grip on the Paris of the 1920s. By the late 1920s Icart, working for both publications and major fashion and design studios, had become very successful, both artistically and financially. His etchings reached their height of brilliance in this era of Art Deco, and Icart had become the symbol of the epoch. Yet, although Icart has created for us a picture of Paris and New York life in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked in his own style, derived principally from the study of eighteenth-century French masters such as Jean Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean Honoré Fragonard. In Icart's drawings, one sees the Impressionists Degas...
    Category

    1920s Art Deco Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Engraving, Aquatint

  • Sew What (the swells and swirls of the stripes are now in the hands of others)
    By Carol Wax
    Located in New Orleans, LA
    "Sew What" is a color mezzotint with burin engraving created in an edition of 35. This impression is #6. I love sumptuously designed textiles in both real life and art. Patterns metamorphosing over fabric folds appeal to my interest in modulating rhythmic forms, particularly the swells and swirls of calligraphic stripes. I’m also fascinated by articulated wooden hand models, which appear in many of my paintings. Combining these passions with sewing paraphernalia from my seamstress days provided inspiration for my color mezzotint engraving "Sew What". Carol Wax originally trained to be a classical musician at the Manhattan School of Music but fell in love with printmaking. Soon after she began engraving mezzotints she was asked by the renowned print dealer...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Mezzotint

  • DEATH OF THE FIRST BORN - Proof - Magnificent Large Scale Mezzotint
    By John Martin
    Located in Santa Monica, CA
    JOHN MARTIN (1789 – 1854) DEATH OF THE FIRST BORN, Dedicated to His Majesty King Louise Philippe, King of the French, as a Tribute of the Artist’s Grateful...
    Category

    1830s Old Masters Interior Prints

    Materials

    Mezzotint

  • Interior with Red Shawl (Young woman reads in this calm Vermeer-like interior)
    Located in New Orleans, LA
    Interior with a red shawl conveys a quite different mood and feeling: one of calm, and suspension of time. Here the suggestion is that the woman is waiting ...
    Category

    Early 20th Century Dutch School Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Mezzotint

Recently Viewed

View All