Leopold Levitsky (1906 Burdiakowce near Ternopil - 1973 Lviv), "The Deaf," 1960s.

linocut/paper
Dimensions: 24.5 x 52 cm (clear passe-partout)
signed and described in pencil at the bottom: '"deaf and dumb" | L. Lewicki'.

Condition
framed

Biography
Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow in 1925-32. From these years comes most of his output in the field of printmaking in metal techniques (later he practiced linocut and woodcut). He was a member of the first "Cracow Group" (1933-1937), sympathetic to the communists. He was repressed by the police for these associations and participation in demonstrations. Together with other members of the group (including Maria Jarema, Stanislaw Osostowicz, Jonasz Stern), he co-founded the last generation of the Polish avant-garde before World War II. In addition to social issues, the group's explorations were directed towards a peculiar kind of brutal realism, its members independently arrived at abstraction based on expressionism. Levitsky spent the years of World War II in Chortkiv (1939-41) and in the Samarkand region, where he worked as a teacher and served in a construction battalion (1941-44). From 1944 he lived permanently in Lviv. He was active in the Artists' Union there. In 1970 he was awarded the title of Distinguished Artist of the Ukrainian SSR. After the war, he created in the convention of socialist realism in force in the USSR. He practiced easel and decorative painting, sculpture, printmaking and applied graphics (book graphics).