Levi, née Weiler in Berlin, began her artistic career as a portrait painter inspired by German and Austrian Expressionism. In 1934, she immigrated to Israel, where she studied for two years at Jacob Steinhardt’s studio in Jerusalem. In 1940, she joined the Motza group, where she also met the violinist and painter Yitzhak Levi, whom she married in 1944. After a decade of moving about the country, the couple finally settled in the artists’ quarter in Safed, where she worked until 1995.

Although she regarded landscape painting to be the focus of her artistic endeavor from the late 1940s onwards, Levy continued to paint and exhibit portraits and figures. Among the hundreds of works in her estate is an impressive body of work, dating back to the period between the 1970s and the early 1990s, that centered on a female figure – making this a central part of her oeuvre.

The exhibition “My Face” seeks to highlight the female figure in Levi’s work from a contemporary point of view, pointing to the evolution of her work in her later years as a combination of life circumstances and a certain artistic approach that placed great focus on the formalistic values of painting. She painted many female figures (some anonymous and some portraits of her friends), including numerous self portraits, all informed by ruthless treatment and bold exploration both of the body of painting and of the female body. Through all of these, her work gave expression to intimate, muted contents, in light of which she is revealed not only as an artist who maintains a fresh perspective that is true to herself, but also as a bold individual who dared to swim against the current.

Works are courtesy of the artist’s family, unless otherwise indicated.

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