Beatrice S. Levy
# Beatrice S. Levy

Beatrice Sophia Steinfeld Levy (April 3, 1892 - July 19, 1974) was an American printmaker and painter, draftsman, and instructor.

## Early life and education

She was born in Chicago to a German-Jewish emigrant father and a mother from Kentucky and grew up on Chicago's Near South Side. She studied at the Chicago Art Institute after graduating from high school in 1910 with an initial focus on illustration. While there, she was among a small number of students including Stanislaus Szukalski who defended the modernist works on display at the notorious Armory Show at the Art Institute in 1913. Encouraged by her instructors she continued her art education after graduating in 1910 with honorable mention, studying portraiture with Ralph Clarkson in Chicago, painting with Charles Hawthorne in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and fine print methods with Vojtěch Preissig in New York's Art Students League in 1915.

## Career

By then, she was already a prolific painter and printmaker, producing striking images with saturated color and abbreviated, semi-realist imagery. One of the earliest members of the Chicago Society of Etchers, her exacting, three-plate color intaglios were first exhibited by the Society in 1914. The same year, one of her prints received an honorable mention at Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

She held her first solo exhibition in 1916 at Goupil & Cie Gallery in New York, featured her entire collection of color aquatints. She had a studio in Chicago's 57th Street Art Colony.

In the 1920s she helped form an "art for art's sake" group called the Cor Ardens along with Szukalski, Carl Hoeckner, Ramon Shiva, and Gerrit Sinclair. Traveling with friends all over the United States, Europe, and Mexico, she was by then well-known for "forceful painting in oils, but also for her ability to express in the exquisite art of the copper plate … an individual style through a simple and dignified treatment of her subject matter." (Palos Journal, May 1929)

During the Great Depression (1929-39), Levy supervised the Easel Painting Division and Art Gallery of the Illinois Art Project of the WPA. She also supervised the Easel Painting Division for the Federal Arts Project a decade later.

For two years during World War II, Levy worked as a meteorological map draftsman and her subsequent work developed along more modern lines.

She traveled extensively in the US, Europe, and North Africa and summered La Jolla, California for several years before making it her home in 1950. She served on the board of the San Diego Museum of Art (then the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery) and taught at the La Jolla Museum School of Arts and Crafts (1961–62). Also at the time, she began a close relationship with the modernist artist Dorothy Stratton King, a La Jolla resident with whom she shared a passion for rich color and strong form.

Levy experimented heavily in her final decade in linear and highly abstract printmaking and enamels.

Levy never married. After a long and distinguished career, she died in La Jolla in 1974. Her papers are held by the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

## Leadership positions

Chicago Society of Artists, president and board member

Chicago Society of Etchers, vice president and board member

Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, board member

Arts Club of Chicago, vice president and member

Works Progress Administration Art Project Gallery, supervisor

Easel Painting Division for the Federal Art Project, supervisor

San Diego Museum of Art (then the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery), board member

## Solo exhibitions

1916 Goupil & Cie Gallery, New York

1923 Milwaukee Art Institute, Wisconsin

1924 Philadelphia Print Club, Pennsylvania

1924 Art Club, Washington, DC

1924 Godspeed's Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts

1924 Grand Rapids Art Gallery, Grand Rapids, Michigan

1926 Library of Congress, Washington, DC

1929 Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA

1931 Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois

1932 Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

1933–34 Century of Progress, Chicago Art Institute, Illinois

1934 John H Vanderpoel Gallery, Chicago, Illinois

1948 Grinnel College, Iowa

1955 La Jolla Art Center, San Diego, California

1957 Jonson Gallery, University New Mexico

1960 Long Beach Museum, California

## Awards

Pan Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, honorable mention (etching), 1915

Robert Rice Jenkins Prize for Painting, Art Institute of Chicago, 1923

Chicago Society of Artists Exhibition, gold medal, 1928

International Exhibition of Prints, Art Institute of Chicago, etcher's prize, 1930

American Artists, Art Institute of Chicago, honorable mention, 1930

Illinois State Exhibition, purchase prize

Coronado Artists Association, first prize, 1952, 1956, 1957

Del Mar County Fair Art Show, first prize, 1953

San Diego Fine Arts Guild, honorable mention, 1955 and 1957

La Jolla Art Center, print award, 1957

## Permanent collections

Smithsonian Institution

Bibliotéque National, Paris

Art Institute of Chicago

Library of Congress

Chicago Municipal College

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas

National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama

Long Beach Museum of Art

University of New Mexico

La Jolla Museum of Art

Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego

Davenport Municipal Art Gallery

University of New Mexico

Vanderpoel College

