ALEX LEVI (1933-1966)

Lived / Active in: Israel; Italy (Rome); United States (New York)

Known for: Drawing, watercolor, gouache, modernist illustration Styles: Modernism, figurative abstraction, expressionism Subjects: Figures, fantasy/science fiction, still life, landscape, theater and festival design Mediums: Ink, graphite, watercolor, gouache/tempera, mixed media on paper

Alex Levi (Aleksandar Levi, also Alessandro Levi; called Bata) was a modernist painter and draftsman born March 14, 1933, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He died in 1966 at age 33. His work is primarily on paper: ink and graphite drawing, watercolor, and gouache, ranging from early narrative sketches to later figurative abstraction and a 1961 New York science-fiction series.

His father, Rajko Levi, studied art in Paris in the late 1930s. Levi began drawing as a child. In 1941 the family fled the bombing of Belgrade. He was later interned in a camp in Calabria, Italy, then moved to a communal farm in what became Israel with his grandmother.

He studied fresco and fine art in Rome in 1955–1956 at the Scuola delle Arti Ornamentali and the Accademia di Belle Arti, and with Professor Ciotti. Period correspondence in his papers is addressed to Alessandro Levi at Via Collalto Sabino 134, int. 15, Rome. After Rome he worked in Israel as a teacher, festival and theatrical decorator, and mural painter. Documented exhibitions include a one-man show at Katz Gallery, Tel Aviv, 1960; a Tel Aviv one-man show, 1962; and the General Annual Exhibition of the Israeli Painters and Sculptors Association, 1966. Works have been recorded at the Haifa Museum of Modern Art.

By the late 1950s–early 1960s he was also working in New York. His papers include a drawing dated 20 November 1957 and a portfolio labeled in his hand “Alex Levi / 782 W. End Ave / N.Y.C.,” inventoried as 30 designs and 7 temperas. A second folder is titled “science fictions / 1961 – New York.” That group includes drawings after Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and related fantasy and figure compositions. These New York sheets are studio and portfolio works. They are not documented as published book illustrations.

Levi used several signatures and name forms: Alex Levi, Alessandro Levi, and Aleksandar Levi.

Sources: Artist’s dated and inscribed portfolios and correspondence in CalART collection; family biographical record transmitted with the estate; Katz Gallery / Israeli Painters and Sculptors Association listings as recorded in the artist’s papers; Haifa Museum of Modern Art holding as recorded in the same record.