Linda Levi (born 1935) is an American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Early life and education

Born in Los Angeles, Levi was educated at

Los Angeles High School Los Angeles High School is the oldest public high school in the Southern California region and in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Its colors are royal blue and white and the teams are called the Romans. Los Angeles High School is a publ ...

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, and the

University of California at Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the Ca ...

, CA., (1958, BA.

Cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...

1960, MA)

Art beginnings

She began as an abstract

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

influenced by New York City, San Francisco, the artists at

Ferus Gallery The Ferus Gallery was a contemporary art gallery which operated from 1957 to 1966. In 1957, the gallery was located at 736-A North La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles in the U.S. state of California. In 1958, it was relocated across the street to ...

, Los Angeles, Ed Moses, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman many who were her friends, and teachers like

Adolph Gottlieb Adolph Gottlieb (March 14, 1903 – March 4, 1974) was an American abstract expressionist painterChilvers, Ian & Claves-Smith, John eds., ''Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. pp. 282-283 who also m ...

and

Richard Diebenkorn Richard Diebenkorn (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993) was an American painter and printmaker. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s he began ...

. In 1958, she traveled to New York and through artist

Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s u ...

, she met and visited with well-known artists

Mark Rothko Mark Rothko ( ; Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz until 1940; September 25, 1903February 25, 1970) was an American abstract art, abstract painter. He is best known for his color field paintings that depicted irregular and painterly rectangular reg ...

Sam Francis Samuel Lewis Francis (June 25, 1923 – November 4, 1994) was an American painter and printmaker. Early life Sam Francis was born in San Mateo, California,

, and Ibram Lassaw. In 1958 and 1959 she won painting and purchase awards at

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...

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 The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

, 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 The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...

New York City

She moved to New York in 1960, and leased the studio of Jon Schueler. She met Jon's friend, painter and critic, Herman Cherry, whom she dated, and sculptor Gabriel Kohn (exhibited at

Leo Castelli Leo Castelli ( Krausz; September 4, 1907 – August 21, 1999) was an Italian-American art dealer who originated the contemporary art gallery system. His gallery showcased contemporary art for five decades. Among the movements which Castelli s ...

), with whom she lived. Through these artists she met and became friends with leading

abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

artists including

Willem de Kooning Willem de Kooning ( , ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. Born in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, he moved to the United States in 1926, becoming a US citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married pa ...

and Reuben Kadish and his wife Barbara Weeks Kadish. With Kohn, she frequented the Cedar Tavern along with other artists of the day. She also had artist friends from Los Angeles,

Jo Baer Josephine Gail Baer (née Kleinberg; August 7, 1929 – January 21, 2025) was an American painter associated with minimalist art. She began exhibiting her work at the Fischbach Gallery, New York, and other venues for contemporary art in the mid- ...

and Idelle Weber, who had moved to New York. Her direction was changed after living in New York City from 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 Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a Composition (visual arts), composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. ''Abstract art'', ''non-figurative art'', ''non- ...

was still relevant.

Los Angeles

Upon her return to Los Angeles, she began to paint abstract imagery using many mediums like paint, plastic, wood, and worked with light and kinetic movement. She had her first gallery show in 1965 at the 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 The Phoenix Art Museum is the largest art museum, museum for visual art in the southwest United States. Located in Phoenix, Arizona, the museum is . It displays international exhibitions alongside its comprehensive collection of more than 18,0 ...

, "Electric Art," 1969. Linda

The Women's Movement in Los Angeles

Early in the 1970s, she was contacted by her friend,

Judy Chicago Judy Chicago (born Judith Sylvia Cohen; July 20, 1939) is an American feminist artist, art educator, and writer known for her large collaborative art installation pieces about birth and creation images, which examine the role of women in history ...

, 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 Invisible/Visible" at the

Long Beach Museum of Art The Long Beach Museum of Art is a museum located on Ocean Boulevard in the Bluff Park neighborhood of Long Beach, California, United States. The museum's permanent collection includes over 4,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures, works on paper, ...

in 1972 was one of the first women artists’ shows. In 1972, Levi was a founding director of Womanspace in

West Los Angeles West Los Angeles is an area within the city of Los Angeles, California, United States. The residential and commercial neighborhood is divided by the Interstate 405 freeway, and each side is sometimes treated as a distinct neighborhood, mapped ...

, which was the first building in Los Angeles to exhibit and discuss women artists. She curated several exhibits there. Womanspace moved into

Woman's Building The Woman's Building was a non-profit arts and education center located in Los Angeles, California. The Woman's Building focused on feminist art and served as a venue for the women's movement and was spearheaded by artist Judy Chicago, graphic de ...

when it opened in 1973 and closed in 1974. She had an exhibit at the

in 1975 when it was at the old

Chouinard Art Institute The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 by Nelbert Chouinard, Nelbert Murphy Chouinard (1879–1969) in the Westlake, Los Angeles, Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. In 1961, Walt Disney, Walt and ...

building. In 1975,

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting * Aliw Broadcasting Corporation, Philippine broadcast company * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial American ...

television in Los Angeles aired a program called ''Search'' on which she lectured on "Women Artists of the Twentieth Century". Levi 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 also a solo show named Cerritos College in 1984.

The 1990s and 2000s

During the 1990s, she was one of the first fine artists to use the computer to create art, which she continued to do until the 2000s, using photographs digitally altered, and 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

, Esther Robles Gallery, Los Angeles,

University of Nevada, Reno The University of Nevada, Reno (Nevada, the University of Nevada, or UNR) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Reno, Nevada, United States. It is the state's flagship public university and prim ...

Martha Jackson Gallery Martha Jackson (; January 17, 1907 – July 4, 1969) was an American art dealer, gallery owner, and collector. Her New York City based Martha Jackson Gallery, founded in 1953, was groundbreaking in its representation of women and internatio ...

, New York City, Orlando Gallery, Los Angeles, Neuhaus Gallery, New York,

California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a Private university, private art school in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for ...

, and the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

Personal life

Levi is the great-great-granddaughter of Los Angeles

pioneer Pioneer commonly refers to a person who is among the first at something that is new to a community. A pioneer as a settler is among the first settling at a place that is new to the settler community. A historic example are American pioneers, perso ...

, businessman, real estate investor, and historian,

Harris Newmark Harris Newmark (July 5, 1834 – 1916) was a Jewish American businessman, philanthropist, and historian. Newmark immigrated to the United States in 1853. He sailed from Europe to New York City, and then to San Francisco. He joined his older brothe ...

. The Newmark clan was one of the founding families of the

Los Angeles area Greater Los Angeles is the most populous metropolitan area in the U.S. state of California, encompassing five counties in Southern California extending from Ventura County in the west to San Bernardino County and Riverside County in the east, ...

. 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 The Autry Museum of the American West (Autry National Center) is a museum in Los Angeles, California, dedicated to exploring an inclusive history of the American West. Founded in 1988, the museum presents a wide range of exhibitions and pub ...

. In 2014, Linda married her longtime partner and graphic designer Barbara Leif.

Reviews

*Wurdemann, Helen. "Hopkins UCLA Show Outstanding." Los Angeles Mirror News

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

, April. 1960. *Seldes, Henry J. Art Walk, the ''

'', Fri. Nov.15, 1968, Part IV. Esther Robles Gallery. *Nix, Marilyn, "Artists Invisible/Visible, Art Week, April 22, 1972, Volume 3 Number 17. *Muchnic, Suzanne. "Plastic Perspective." ''Art Week'', 1977 *Snyder Susan R. Los Angeles IV:3, 12–14 Nov.1965

Art Forum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...

'' *Danieli, Fidel " Setting The Scene for the Sixties." Images and Issues, Fall, 1981 pg. 37

References

Bibliography

*Schueler, Jon (1999). ''The Sound of Slate: A Painter's Life.'' Picador, USA, pg. 84, 85.
Esther Robles Gallery records, Smithsonian Archives of American Art
*Newman, Thelma (1974)
''Plastics as Sculpture''
Chilton Book Co. , 284pp
Rubinstein, Charlotte Streifer (1990). American Women Sculptors: A History of Women Working in Three Dimensions.
C.K. Hall pg.404 *Rochlin, Harriet; Rochlin, Fred (2000)
''Pioneer Jews: A New Life in the Far West''
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 126–129.

published by Feminist Art Program, California Institute of the Arts pg.44.

External links

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Levi, Linda 1935 births 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American Jews American lesbian artists Artists from California Artists from Los Angeles Living people