43. Jack Levine
(1915-2010)

Sewing Machine Operator

(click on image to print)
Levine, Sewing Machine Operator

Sewing Machine Operator

Original drawing in charcoal on thick wove paper, ca. 1930-34, 255 x 330 mm. Superb, finished, realist drawing of the time of the Great Depression. An early work by Levine, it implies the milieu of poverty and social problems in which he grew up in the South End of Boston, and which continued to preoccupy him in his later, more mature, more expressionist style. This is the work of a boy in his teens, but Levine was already, by his own account, “a formidable draftsman.” Unsigned, as are most of his early works, but originally purchased in a group of Levine drawings, some of which were signed, initialed on the back, or related to known paintings. Levine was a great, if still not fully appreciated, American artist.