Kurt Levy

Kurt Levy (born September 23, 1911 in Bonn , † December 3, 1987 in Cologne ) was a German draftsman, lithographer and illustrator . It is attributed to the Rhenish Expressionism .

Life

Kurt Levy was the eldest son of the businessman Karl Levy and his wife Mathilde, nee. Meyer. Mathilde Levy was a trained milliner and ran a hat and fashion shop called "Tilly Meyer Modes", which later also worked for her husband, who had initially worked as a textile salesman. In addition to their son Kurt, the Levy couple had another son named Rolf and a daughter named Margot. The family came to a certain degree of prosperity; Kurt Levy experienced the outbreak of World War I in Belgium , where he was on vacation with his mother.

Kurt Levy, who enjoyed spending time in his mother's shop as a child and tinkering with scraps of fabric, buttons, etc., received painting lessons from Em Oeliden during his high school days . Kurt Levy became interested in politics around the age of 17. He became a communist . At this point he wanted to quit the Jewish community to which he belonged, but let the rabbi, who promised him the top grade in religious education in the future, stop him. After he had passed the matriculation examination at the classical grammar school in 1931, he successfully applied to the Werkkunstschule in Cologne; his teacher was Friedrich Ahlers-Hestermann .

After just one semester, Levy gave up studying at the craft art school. After a stay in the Upper Black Forest , which had become necessary to cure a slight tuberculosis , Levy returned to Cologne and began studying dentistry.

Levy left Germany in 1933. As a politically persecuted person he emigrated to the Netherlands . His younger brother, who had visited him there several times, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1934 and imprisoned for three months in the Klingelpütz for alleged treason . His father, who had participated in the First World War as a fighter, could not make up his mind to give up the business in Germany and to emigrate despite the threatening situation. He and his wife were placed in a collection camp after the fashion business had been " Aryanized ". The Levy couple were deported in 1943 and later pronounced dead.

Kurt Levy initially stayed in the Netherlands, where he did not receive a work permit, but continued to paint. In 1934 he took part in an exhibition in London in which pictures by emigrated artists were shown. Because of his inclination to communism, the authorities of his country of refuge threatened to expel him.

He then moved to Colombia in the spring of 1935 . From Buenaventura , where he had come on board a merchant ship, Levy traveled straight on to Bogotá . There he worked as a lithographer. He also designed exhibition stands, posters, etc. In 1936 he married Agnes Lopez Cardozo, with whom he had a daughter in 1942, who was named Juanita. From 1937 onwards, Rolf Levy, who had illegally completed an apprenticeship as a car mechanic in a German workshop, was also in Colombia, and in 1939 his sister Margot, who had trained as a milliner with her mother, also followed.

Kurt Levy and his wife, who was a trained fashion draftsman and at times sold Helena Rubinstein's products in Colombia , took an intensive part in the social life in Bogotá. They were able to secure a high standard of living in their country of refuge. You toured Colombia extensively several times in the 1930s and 1940s. Levy was particularly interested in the Spanish colonial style that he encountered here, and in the landscape and the light. He considered Colombia to be one of the most beautiful and diverse countries on earth. In 1946 he gave up his job as a lithographer and became a freelance artist. Sketchbooks, watercolors and oil paintings have survived from the 1940s. The efforts of the government to support painting and sculpture in a country where there was no artistic tradition as in Europe were favorable to his project. During this time, many exhibitions, competitions and public purchases were financed or supported, and Levy was also able to make a living with the proceeds from his pictures and with privately given drawing lessons.

In 1947 the Levys' marriage ended in divorce. That year Kurt Levy got a job as a teacher of painting and drawing at the Centro Colombo Americano in Medellín and exhibited in Bogotá in the Biblioteca Nacional and in the Conservatorio de Cali. In the late 1940s and 1950s numerous exhibitions followed, including in the Biblioteca Departamental in Barranquilla , in the Museo Nacional in Bogotá , in the Brücke in Bonn and in the Buchholz Gallery in Bogotá. From 1955 to 1960 Levy was a professor of watercolor technology at the State University of Barranquilla. The stages of his stay in Colombia after the divorce cannot be completely reconstructed; evidently he changed his place of residence very often. He had his last exhibition in Colombia in 1959 at the Buchholz gallery.

He then returned to Germany, in poor health and worried about the inflation in Colombia. In March 1960 he arrived in Hamburg on a merchant ship and initially drove on to Leverkusen , where he was given accommodation with a cousin who had been saved from the Holocaust by her husband . Then he settled in Cologne and lived as a freelance artist; he also earned money as a tour guide and interpreter. An exhibition of his works took place in 1960 in the Ibero-Amerika-Haus in Frankfurt am Main .

After returning to Europe, he made numerous trips, including three to Israel , and participated in exhibitions of the European Association of Fine Artists. He continued to create oil and watercolor paintings, but now also gouaches and a modified version of the encaustic . In Israel, where he met his childhood friend Erich Töplitz again, Levy portrayed Menachem Begin several times . In 1977 he married Marie-Luise Wittig (1928–2015), whom he had met in 1960. In the following year there was an exhibition of Levy's works in the Hahnentorburg in Cologne, another in 1986 in the New Town House in Bonn and in 1987 exhibitions in galleries in Cologne and Krefeld .

Levy died in 1987 at the age of 76 and was buried in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne . The grave intended for the couple was later cleared; Marie-Luise Levy is buried in a solitary grave.

Commemoration

In 1998 a retrospective of Levy's works was held, entitled Heimat Exil Heimat . The exhibition was repeated in the Stadtmuseum Bonn in 2002. In 2011, on the occasion of his hundredth birthday, an exhibition of his works was shown in the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt .

Levy's artistic estate is in the Ludwig Meidner archive of this museum. It comprises 121 oil paintings, 248 works on paper using various techniques, 30 sketchbooks and documentary material.

On the occasion of the 1998 retrospective, a monograph on Levy with the title Heimat Exil Heimat was published in the series of publications of the Jewish Museum Frankfurt .

literature

• Georg Heuberger (ed.), Heimat Exile Heimat. Emigration and return of the Jewish painter Kurt Levy (1911–1987) , Thorbecke Verlag 1998, ISBN 978-3799523240

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} On the 100th birthday of Kurt Levy (1911–1987) , on kultur-online.net
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Ljuba Berankova and Erik Riedel, Heimat Exil Heimat , in: Georg Heuberger (ed.), Heimat Exil Heimat. Emigration and return of the Jewish painter Kurt Levy (1911–1987) , Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Sigmaringen 1998 (= series of publications by the Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main ), Volume 6, ISBN 3-7995-2324-3 , pp. 15–99
3. ↑ ^{a b} Short biography on juedischesmuseum.de ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ According to the summary of life on kultur-online.net , he was only a professor from 1956.
5. ↑ Picture of the old grave and reference to the individual grave of the wife. In: findagrave.com. Retrieved November 4, 2018 . 
6. ↑ Review on www.kunsthandelhenkvanderkamp.com ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ^ Works from the estate of Kurt Levy in the Ludwig Meidner archive