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John Levee

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John Levee
John Levee in 1976
Born(1924-04-10)April 10, 1924
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
DiedJanuary 18, 2017(2017-01-18) (aged 92)
Paris, France
Known forAbstract expressionism

John Levee (April 10, 1924 – January 18, 2017) was an American abstract expressionist painter who had worked in Paris since 1949. His father was M. C. Levee.[1][2]

Background

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John Levee drawing 1955, ink on paper 75 × 52.5 cm, in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York

John Harrison Levee received a master's degree in philosophy from UCLA and became an aviator in the Second World War. After the war he decided to stay to work as a painter in Montparnasse. He studied art at the Art Center School in Los Angeles and at Académie Julian in Paris from 1949 to 1951.

His early painting was inspired by the New York School of abstract expressionism, which included Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston, among others. After a period of hard-edge painting based on geometric abstraction in the 1960s, Levee returned to his more spontaneous abstract expressionist style, often using collage elements with loose brush work typical of lyrical abstraction.

Reference works in public collections

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Levee, John H. "California, Birth Index, 1905–1995". familysearch. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
  2. ^ "JOHN HARRISON LEVEE HAS DIED JANUARY 18TH 2017 IN PARIS". Le Musee Prive. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
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