Julien Levy: Portrait of an Art Gallery

by Ingrid Schaffner (Editor), Lisa Jacobs (Editor)

Julien Levy (1906-1981) was one of the most influential art dealers of the twentiethcentury. The Julien Levy Gallery, which opened in New York in 1931 and closed in 1949, played anessential role in the shift of the cultural avant-garde from Paris to New York. It was the firstAmerican gallery to sponsor a show on Surrealism and to champion Neoromanticism, Magic Realism, andMachine Abstraction. Luis Buñuel's film Un Chien Andalou and Joseph Cornell's Rose Hobart were firstscreened in the gallery. Among the artists Levy exhibited were Eugene Atget, Constantin Brancusi,Henri Cartier-Bresson, Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dali, Walt Disney, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, WalkerEvans, Leonor Fini, Naum Gabo, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Frida Kahlo, Fernand Léger, RenéMagritte, Lee Miller, Man Ray, Ben Shahn, and Dorothea Tanning. Levy also initiated the cocktailopening.This book, which accompanies a retrospective exhibition on the Julien Levy Gallery in NewYork, includes reproductions of paintings, photographs, and film stills from museum and privatecollections, as well as of art and ephemera from Levy's own collection. The book offersrecollections of Levy and his gallery from several angles. Dorothea Tanning reminisces about herlifelong friendship with her first dealer. Ingrid Schaffner surveys the evolution of Levy'senterprise from combination curiosity shop, exhibition space, and performance site into a model forthe contemporary art gallery. Steven Watson discusses Levy's personal and professional affiliationswith the "Harvard Moderns"--Alfred Barr, Jr., and A. Everett Austin among them. Carolyn Burke looksat Levy's complex relationship with his mother-in-law, poet and painter Mina Loy, who acted as hisagent and mentor in Paris. Finally, Lisa Jacobs provides a chronology of the events of the galleryand of Levy's life.Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Equitable Gallery, NewYork.

Genres: Biography, Art

192 pages, Hardcover

First published November 13, 1998