Articles de presse et Magazines

Art: The Younger Generation

Publié le Lundi 11 Mars 1957

"John Levee, 32, a talented new expatriate Paris painter who (along with Sam Francis, 33, and Paul Jenkins, 33) has made a name for himself abroad, was picked for both the Whitney and Museum of Modern Art shows. A U.S. Air Force officer during World War II, Levee went to Paris to study painting on the G.I. bill. First registered at the Academic Julian, he was nearly thrown out for flouting academic standards, wound up sharing the school's Grand Prix second prize with his Parisian wife. Approaching abstraction via Cezanne and the Cubists, Levee also shows the influence of his French contemporaries Pierre Soulages and the late Nicolas de Stael. but now feels his painting is becoming less French, more American, "less architectural, less constructed, more organic." 

Art: Small Gouaches

Publié le 6 Novembre 1957

"Another exhibition featuring gouaches is John Levee's at the Andre Emmerich Gallery, 18 East Seventy-seventh Street. Levee, a young American who lives in Paris, offers improvisations. They are, for the most part, expressions of movement in space. Levee uses line to suggest motility and color to produce the volumes affected by this move- ment. In a few of the more simple paintings Levee achieves a dynamic relation- ship between the space of the white page and the thrust of lines on it."

A TRAVERS LES GALERIES

Publié le 22 Juillet 1960

"JOHN LEVEE (né en 1924 à Los Angeles) est un de ces jeunes peintres américains qui se sont fixés à Paris après la guerre. Avec Chelimsky, Downing, etc., il participe à l'exposition itinérante des peintres et sculpteurs américains en France qui fait cet été le tour des grandes villes de province. On l'a vu aussi au Salon des réalités nouvelles, au Salon de mai.

Cette fois il s'agit d'une importante exposition personnelle. On retrouve son goût pour les empâtements moelleux et cendrés, distribués chaotiquement en touches carrées, surtout dans une série de grandes toiles, carrées elles aussi, que le massif coloré traverse transversalement comme selon un itinéraire périlleux à travers l'espace. Cette structure, qui ménage dans la surface de larges zones vierges, connaît actuellement chez plusieurs compatriotes de Levée une certaine vogue. Ici elle est traitée de façon opaque, dans un parti pris de violente affirmation colorée, où les bleus et les noirs reviennent avec insistance. Il n'y a pas de sujet, et les toiles sont seulement titrées du nom d'un mois suivi d'un numéro d'ordre. Dans d'autres toiles les larges traînées noires que le peintre affectionne émergent d'un agencement d'une violence hirsute."

MIND AND EYE; The Outer and Inner Worlds of Artists Reflected Faithfully in Their Work

Publié le 6 Novembre 1960

"Levee's substantially encrusted and complex picture surfaces are dramatically, even emotionally conceived. Paint is handled in a virtuoso fashion, hardening into rich nuggets, flaring out in a texture like that of crushed jewels, or just touching the canvas in flecks or in long thin trails. The existence of these pictures is positive and occa-sionally aggressive. Levee pulls out all the stops in his color-paint-touch organ and the combined results are decidedly impressive."

John Levee Shows Art at the Leavin

Publié le 17 Août 1970

"John Levee shows collages and lithographs at the Margo Leavin Gallery (9028 Norma Place). Compositions consist of hard-edge formats often packed with circles and segments. Levee's first mature art was in abstract expressionist style. The emotive push-pull tensions of that past probably are what prevents these geometric compositions from going flat.

Collages are built from pieces of cut cork and cardboard, painted in near with sherbet variations. They often feel like sculpture in very low relief. Such artists will probably one day provide history with a solid bridge between painterly abstraction and color art. Levee reminds one, simultaneously, Albers, Vasarely and Al Held. He produces an art of admirably quiet strength that may just whisper too softly for its own good."