John Levee Abstract Expressionist Drawing, 1969

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Provenance: Darthea Speyer, Paris.
backing 12 X 17 image 8.5 X 11.5

John Levee (1924 - 2017) was an American … Read more Provenance: Darthea Speyer, Paris.
backing 12 X 17 image 8.5 X 11.5

John Levee (1924 - 2017) was an American modern art abstract expressionist painter who had worked in Paris since 1949. His father was Hollywood legend M. C. Levee.
John Harrison Levee received a master's degree in philosophy from UCLA and became an aviator in the Second World War. He studied art at the Art Center School in Los Angeles (with Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and Richard Diebenkorn), In New York with Abe Rattner and Stuart Davis and at Académie Julian in Paris from 1949 to 1951. After the war he decided to stay to work as a painter in Montparnasse, Paris, France. Becoming one of the prominent modernist American artists in paris during the post-war period along with Sam Francis. In 1951 he held his first solo exhibition at Galerie 8, and also began exhibiting at the Salon d’Automne, the Salon de Mai and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. Numerous exhibitions ensued including “Peintres les Américains en France” Galerie Craven in 1953, “Dix Jeunes Peintres de l’Ecole de Paris” Galerie de France in 1956, “Antagonismes” Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 1960, and the famous annual “L’Ecole de Paris” exhibitions at Galerie Charpentier from 1958-1961.
His early painting was inspired by the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, which included Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston, among others. After a period of hard-edge painting based on geometric abstraction in the 1960s, Levee returned to his more spontaneous Abstract Expressionism style, often using collage elements with loose brush work typical of lyrical abstraction. A prominent exponent of Abstract Expressionism or Abstraction Lyrique, as it was known in France, Levée established an international reputation with numerous museum exhibitions.




Levée exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1957 and 1958, the Whitney Museum NY in 1957, 1959 and 1965, Carnegie Institute 1958, Museum of Modern Art Jerusalem 1963, Phoenix Museum of Art Arizona 1964, Museum of Tel Aviv 1969, Palm Springs Museum 1977. He showed in New York at Andre Emmerich gallery and in London at Gimpel Fils.


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Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
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Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
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Yale University
Palm Springs Desert Museum, California
Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Washington, D.C. See less