Léopold-Lévy (Léopold Levy aka) - Paris - 1882 - Paris - 1966
Léopold-Lévy is the last child of family of industrials. Coming from Sélestat in Alsace (East of France), his father chooses France in 1870 in order to avoid submission to the German. Art amateur, he hangs out in the Drouot Hotel, collects works of Courbet, Corot and transmits to his son the taste for painting. Léopold-Lévy loses his father at the age of eleven and decides to become a painter. He fails the entrance exam to the Fine Arts Academy of Paris, spends a lot of time in the Louvre and admires Cezanne and Renoir. He meets the sculptor Charles Despiau and the painter George Linaret (who dies suddenly in 1905). The group gathers to paint and discuss at the Luxembourg Park. Léopold-Lévy draws humoristic cartoons for several magazines including Rire and Pêle-Mêle.
In 1900, the artist shows his painting for the first time at the Show of the Independents (”Le salon des Indépendant”), in the fairground housing of the Backyard of the Queen.
In 1914, Léopold-Lévy is enrolled in the army. At the end of the war, he leaves Paris to discover the south of France and Italy. It’s in Cassis, between 1920 and 1922, that he meets Jean Dufy and Jean Marchand. The following year, Léopold-Lévy is in La Ciotat and hangs out with George Braque and André Derain who live not far from his place.
From 1927 on, he lives between Aix-en-Provence and Paris that he leaves in 1936 to head the painting department at the Fine Arts Academy of Istanbul. During these years of teaching, he holds only two shows, one at the Academy of Art of Istanbul and another one at the French Consulate.
Back in France in 1949, Léopold-Lévy divides his time between the South of France and Paris.
Nadine Nieszawer, Marie Boyé, Paul Fogel
"Peintres Juifs à Paris 1905-1939 Ecole de Paris"
Editons Denoel 2000
email: expertise@ecoledeparis.org