Satirical Painter Who Knocked My Socks Off: RIP Jack Levine

I had never heard of the painter Jack Levine until last week. This week, the papers are full of him, for he died on November 8, aged 95.

Levine’s painting Birmingham stopped me in my tracks when I visited the de Young museum in San Francisco, where it hangs in the lobby. I broke all the rules and took a picture.

The picture makes a strong statement about life for black people in Birmingham, Alabama during segregation and was painted in 1963 at the same time as Martin Luther King was writing to his fellow clergymen from Birmingham’s Jail. Read his letter here.

The picture I have featured in the title bar above (click on the title of this post if you can’t see it) shows the Duke and Duchess of Windsor on their visit to Hitler in the 1930s. An obsequious American couple are curtseying to the couple.

You can see more of Jack Levine’s paintings here.