Linda Levi
Linda Levi (born 1935) in Los Angeles, California is a Jewish American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Education
She was educated at Los Angeles High School 1953, University of California, Berkeley, CA (1954), University of California at Los Angeles, CA., (1958, BA. Cum laude 1960, MA)
Art Beginnings
She began as an abstract expressionist influenced by New York, San Francisco, the artists at Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, Ed Moses, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman many who were her friends, and teachers like Adolph Gottlieb and Richard Diebenkorn. In 1958, she traveled to New York City and through artist Helen Frankenthaler, she met and visited with well-known artists Mark Rothko, Sam Francis, Theodore Stamos, and Ibram Lassaw. In 1958, and 1959 she won painting and purchase awards at Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdale Park, Los Angeles. She was included in "Fifty Paintings by Thirty-seven Painters of the Los Angeles Area," UCLA Art Galleries, University of California, Los Angeles, CA. A 1960 survey of thirty years of Los Angeles Art curated by Henry T. Hopkins future Director of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
New York City
She moved to New York City in 1960, and leased the studio of John Schueler. She met John’s friend, painter and critic, Herman Cherry whom she dated, and sculptor Gabriel Kohn, (exhibited at Leo Castelli), who lived with her in New York City. Because of these artists she met and became friends with leading Abstract Expressionist artists including Willem de Kooning and Reuben Kadish and his wife Barbara Weeks Kadish. With Gabe Kohn, she hung out at The Cedar Tavern like the other artists of the day. She also had Los Angeles artist friends who had moved to New York, Jo Baer and Idelle Weber
Her direction was changed after living in New York City in 1960. She saw that abstract expressionist was coming to an end and began to paint images around her like gas meters and cameras. But that was short lived as she felt that abstract painting was still relevant.
Los Angeles 1960s
Upon her return to Los Angeles, she began to paint abstract imagery using many mediums like paint and plastic, wood, and worked with light and kinetic movement. She had her first gallery show in 1965 at Esther Robles gallery in Los Angeles. In the 1960s she was part of the Los Angeles movement of plastic and light artists and was included in many exhibits dealing with these materials, i.e., the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York, “Plastics as Plastics,” and Phoenix Art Museum, “Electric Art,” 1969.
The Women’s Movement in Los Angeles 1970s
Early in the 1970s, she was contacted by her friend, Judy Chicago, and asked if she’d like to join a small group of women artists to discuss art and exhibit with them. The resulting exhibit “Twenty One Women Artists Invisable/Visable” at The Long Beach Museum in 1972 was one of the first women artists’ shows. Levi in 1972 was a founding director of Womanspace in West Los Angeles the first building in Los Angeles to exhibit and discuss women artists. She curated several exhibits there. Womanspace moved into Woman's Building when it opened in 1973 and closed in 1974. She had an exhibit at the Woman's Building in 1975 when it was at the old Chouinard Art institute building.
ABC television in Los Angeles had a program called “Search’ in 1975 where she lectured on “Women Artists of the twentieth Century.”
She continued to work with plastic material during the 1970s.
The 1980s
In the 1980s Levi used wood and other materials to create non-objective imagery and exhibited these in group shows and in a solo show at Cerritos College in 1984
The 1990s and 2000s
During the 1990s, she was one of the first fine artists to use the computer to do art and she has continued to work on the computer in the 2000s, using photographs digitally altered, exhibiting the art at Orlando Gallery in Tarzana, California in 2005.
Art Exhibits
Levi has been included in many group shows, galleries, and museums and represented by many dealers over the course of her 40 year career including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Esther Robles Gallery, Los Angeles, University of Nevada, Reno, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York City, California Institute of the Arts, and the Library of Congress.
Pioneer Newmark Family
She is the great great granddaughter of famed Los Angeles pioneer, businessman, real estate investor, and historian, Harris Newmark. The Newmark clan was one of the founding families of the Los Angeles area. Following in his footsteps in Spring, 2007, she authored for the “Western States Jewish History” quarterly an article entitled Linda Levi, Growing Up as a “Newmark” in Los Angeles, 1935-1950. In 2007, she donated Newmark and Levi papers and ephemera to the Autry National Center. She has been encouraged by them to continue writing her autobiography.
Reviews
Wurdemann, Helen. "Hopkins UCLA Show Outstanding,"Los Angeles Times, 1960
Muchnic, Suzanne. "Plastic Perspective, Art Week, 1977
William Wilson, Los Angeles Times
References
Schueler, Jon, (1999). The Sound of Slate, a painter's life. Picador, USA, pg.84, 85
Esther Robles Gallery 1947-1979 [[1]]
Newman, Thelma; 1974. Plastics as Sculpture. Chilton Book Co. ISBN-13: 9780801957673 284pp [[2]]
Rochlin, Harriet; Rochlin, Fred (2000-07-05). Pioneer Jews: A New Life in the Far West. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 126-129. ISBN 0618001964. [[3]]
Shapiro, Miriam. Art: A Woman's Sensibility, Published by Feminist Art Program, California Institute of the Arts, 1975
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