Mon Levinson (1926-2014)

MON LEVINSON (1926-2014) Segmented Squares, 1966 Light Play X, 1968 Born and raised in New York City, Mon Levinson studied economics at the University of Pennsylvania (BA in 1948) before pursuing art in New York. Levinson underwent psychotherapy with Dada leader Richard Huelsenbeck in the late Fifties, which opened him to becoming an artist. Through Huelsenbeck, Levinson became acquainted with European artists like Jean Arp and Jean Tinguely and began to develop his own artistic approach. By 1960 Levinson was working in paper producing reliefs of intricate shadow compositions and light reflections called Knife Drawings . Around the same time Levinson started working in plastic, using both opaque white and clear vinyl sheets, layered in wooden boxes. These constructions called Space Reliefs were included in the group exhibition New Forms – New Media at Martha Jackson Gallery in 1960. Both the Knife Drawings and the Space Reliefs were shown in his first solo exhibition at the Kornblee Gallery in 1961. Levinson experimented further with transparency and patterns using thin lines on layers of Plexiglas that appeared to move as a view - er shifted his position. Levinson had discovered the moiré effect and could adjust the “speed” of the piece through the distance between the Plexiglas sheets. In these 1960s constructions, Levinson merged painting and sculpture to manipulate the perception of the viewer. In his works with Plexiglas and moiré patterns, Levinson was recognized as one of the progenitors of Op Art. He was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye . Mon Levinson traveled to Caracas in March of 1968 to open an exhibition at the Venezuelan-American Center of Op art from the Marlboro Art Collection owned by Philip Morris International. The exhibition included 45 prints by Levinson and other internation - ally known Op artists. It had recently been shown in 17 US cities and was expanded in Caracas with six of Levinson’s Plexiglas con - structions. While in Caracas, Levinson visited his friend the artist Gego and was included in two exhibitions at the Museo de Bellas Artes. In the late 1960s Mon Levinson’s constructions became more minimal with a focus on the nature of light and shadow. These works used overhead lighting and clear Plexiglas forms mounted to the wall to cast shadows and reflections of varying geometric shapes. The geometry of Suprematism and the architectural approach of Constructivism were influences on these works. Levinson’s Plexi wall reliefs were featured in the Whitney Museum’s annual of 1970, as well as A Plastic Presence , a 1969 exhibition organized by the Milwaukee Art Center, which traveled to the Jewish Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In the 1980s Levinson returned to working in paper, approaching it as both an object and a surface. He found the edges and porosity of paper permitted endless variations of systematic processes involving folding, dying, and rubbing. In Levinson’s folded paper works, the frayed edges sometimes convey a sense of landscape and nature. Levinson has been the subject of 15 solo exhibitions at galleries and museums throughout the United States. The Kornblee Gallery was Levinson’s first New York dealer and held nine solo exhibitions between 1961 and 1972. Levinson’s work was included in group exhi - bitions at the Martha Jackson Gallery ( New Forms, New Media , 1960; Vibrations Eleven , 1965) and the Sidney Janis Gallery ( Classic Spirit in 20 th Century Art , 1964). In 1970 Levinson exhibited his work at David Hickey’s influential art gallery called A Clean, Well-Lighted Space in Austin, Texas. In the 1970s Levinson was represented by Rosa Esman Gallery with solo exhibitions in 1976 and 1977. In addition to The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art, Levinson’s work was included in other important museum exhibitions of Op and Minimal art, including the 1965 traveling exhibition organized by the American Federation of the Art, Pop and Op , and the 1968 Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s Plus By Minus . In 1968 Robert Rauschenberg’s non-profit organization Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) included Levinson’s Stepped Shift I , a Plexiglas and light work, in E.A.T.’s exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum titled Some More Beginnings . More recently in 2007, Levinson participated in the Columbus Museum of Art’s exhibition, Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s . Levinson’s work has been shown at D. Wigmore Fine Art in New York since 2007 and most recently the artist was featured in New Material, New Approaches in 2012 along with Julian Stanczak (b.1928) and Leroy Lamis (1925-2010). Mon Levinson is also known in the decorative arts community. From 1990 to 2013, Levinson and his wife Joan Gruzen ran 20th Century Arts & Artifacts, a business dealing in American Modernist, Arts & Crafts, Mexican, Tribal, and Scandinavian silver. Levinson also has produced a few rare pieces related to his 1960s constructions which were recently shown by art jewelers at the 2013 Winter Antiques Show in New York. Permanent collections that hold Mon Levinson’s work include: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Malmo Art Museum, Sweden; Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela; New York University Art Collection, New York, NY. Most notable of Levinson’s public commissions are the P.S. 166 New York City playground funded with an Astor Foundation Grant and the Mach Pelah Cemetery in Flint, Michigan. Recently Mon Levinson’s work was acquired by the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires and will be included in a traveling exhibition Global Exchange: Geometric Abstraction Since 1950 in Italy. Mon in the D. Wigmore library, 2011 D. WIGMORE FINE ART, INC . 730 F IFTH A VENUE , S UITE 602, N EW Y ORK , NY 10019 T ELEPHONE 212-581-1657 DWIGMORE . COM.

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