Painter Rudolf Levy (1875-1944) was a central figure in the Munich and Paris avant-gardes, and enjoyed great success with his colourful portraits, landscapes and still lifes in Berlin during the 1920s, including in the legendary Flechtheim Gallery. When the National Socialists seized power, this brought his career to an abrupt end. After an odyssey of flight, Levy was able to settle in Florence, where his work reached a final impressive climax before his deportation and murder in Auschwitz concentration camp.
The Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern is the first German exhibition house to dedicate a retrospective to the work and life of Rudolf Levy. The catalogue opens the perspective on an artist of European standing whose rich pictorial world can be rediscovered again and again. Contributions by renowned authors shed light on Levy’s fate as a persecuted artist and as a persecuted Jew, on the artistic kaleidoscope of his time, his years in exile in Florence, and the reception and re-canonisation of his art in the young Federal Republic.
Rediscovery of a great classic of modernism to mark a first retrospective in Germany – Project in international cooperation with the Uffizi Gallery in Florence
Standard work on Rudolf Levy in German
Including a contemporary art and text contribution by Edmund de Waal
Exhibition: Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern, 28 October 2023 to 11 February 2024 (Under the patronage of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier)
Look inside