Julien Levy

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Julien Levy (born January 22, 1906 in New York , † February 10, 1981 in New Haven , Connecticut ) was a well-known American art dealer , gallery owner and art collector who promoted surrealist art with his Julien Levy Gallery, which he founded in 1931 and existed until 1949 as well as promoting artistic photography and experimental films.

Live and act

Born in New York, Levy studied at Harvard with Paul J. Sachs . His fellow students included Alfred Barr , James Thrall Soby and Philip Johnson . However, he gave up his studies without a degree and moved to Paris in 1927, where he made friends with Man Ray , Marcel Duchamp , Berenice Abbott - Man Ray's former assistant - and Eugène Atget , who died that same year. In Paris he also met his future wife Joella Haweis, the daughter of Mina Loy .

After three years in Paris, Levy moved back to New York and decided to become an art dealer. Together with Abbott, he showed an exhibition of Atget's photographs at the Weyhe Gallery, where he worked briefly as an assistant. A little later, as co-owner, he offered the photographs to the Museum of Modern Art in vain; It was not until 1969 that the museum bought it.

In November 1931 he opened his own gallery at 602 Madison Avenue in Manhattan ; the foundation was made possible by an inheritance he had received from his mother. Photo exhibitions showed the works of his friend and mentor Alfred Stieglitz as well as those of Atget, Nadar and Henri Cartier-Bresson . Since the trade in photographs alone was not sufficient, Levy extended the focus of his exhibitions to surrealist works and on January 29, 1932 he showed the exhibition Surrealism Paintings, Drawings and Photographs with works by Pablo Picasso , Max Ernst , Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp, a highlight was Salvador Dalí's painting The Persistence of Memory (briefly in Levy's possession). It was the first exhibition of surrealism in New York. In 1933 the first exhibition of the photographer Lee Miller took place, and in 1934 he showed sculptures by Alberto Giacometti . Luis Buñuel's film Un chien andalou and Joseph Cornell's Rose Hobart / Tristes Tropiques had their American premiere in Levy's gallery.

In 1937 the gallery moved to new premises at 15 East 57th Street, where Levy showed the first solo exhibition by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo ; it ran from November 1 to November 15, 1938. From 1943 until the gallery closed in 1949, it was located at 42 East 57th Street. In 1944 Max Ernst's wife Dorothea Tanning had a solo exhibition here; Arshile Gorky's solo exhibition followed in 1945 .

After the gallery closed, Levy retired to a farm in Connecticut and later taught at Sarah Lawrence College and the State University of New York at Purchase . He died in 1981. Levy was married three times; his second wife was Muriel Streeter, the third Jean Farley McLaughlin. There are three sons from the first marriage.

Memorial exhibitions

In 1998 a commemorative exhibition entitled Julien Levy: Portrait of an Art Gallery was held at the Equitable Gallery in New York, at which works of art exhibited by Levy could be seen again. The exhibition Dreaming in Black and White: Photography at the Julien Levy Gallery in the Philadelphia Museum of Art followed in 2006 on the occasion of his 100th birthday, which offered a comprehensive presentation of the gallery owner's photo collection.

Publications (selection)

  • Arshile Gorky . Abrams, New York 1966
  • Memoir of an Art Gallery , Putnam's, New York 1977; New edition, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 2003, ISBN 0-878-46653-3
  • Surrealism , Black Sun Press 1936; New edition Da Capo Press, New York 1995, ISBN 0-306-80663-0

literature

  • Judith Parker: "Art to me is almost religion." Harvard Magazine, 1979
  • Ingrid Schaffner, Lisa Jacobs (eds.): Julien Levy: Portrait of an Art Gallery . MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1998, ISBN 0-262-19412-0
  • Katherine Ware, Peter Barberie (Eds.): Dreaming in Black and White: Photography at the Julien Levy Gallery (Series Philadelphia Museum of Art). Yale University Press 2006, ISBN 978-0-300-11643-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "The Art of Lee Miller" in Paris , parisvoice.com, accessed on March 12, 2014
  2. ↑ Frida Kahlo , moma.org, accessed on 11 March 2014
  3. ↑ Quoted from the web links of the University of Pennsylvania, The Arthistory and Obituaries
  4. ↑ Lewis Kachur: Julien Levy, Art Dealer
  5. ↑ Julien Levy. Dreaming in Black and White: Photography at the Julien Levy Gallery
personal data
SURNAME Levy, Julien
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American gallery owner and art dealer
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH new York
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 1981
Place of death New Haven