Beatrice Sophia Steinfeld Levy (April 3, 1892 - July 19, 1974) was an American printmaker and painter, draftsman, and instructor.
She was born in Chicago to a German-Jewish emigrant father and a mother from Kentucky and grew up on Chicago's Near South Side. She studied at the Chicago Art Institute after graduating from high school in 1910 with an initial focus on illustration. While there, she was among a small number of students including Stanislaus Szukalski who defended the modernist works on display at the notorious Armory Show at the Art Institute in 1913. Encouraged by her instructors she continued her art education after graduating in 1910 with honorable mention, studying portraiture with Ralph Clarkson in Chicago, painting with Charles Hawthorne in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and fine print methods with VojtÃÂch Preissig in New York's Art Students League in 1915.
By then, she was already a prolific painter and printmaker, producing striking images with saturated color and abbreviated, semi-realist imagery. One of the earliest members of the Chicago Society of Etchers, her exacting, three-plate color intaglios were first exhibited by the Society in 1914. The same year, one of her prints received an honorable mention at PanamaâÂÂPacific International Exposition in San Francisco.
She held her first solo exhibition in 1916 at Goupil & Cie Gallery in New York, featured her entire collection of color aquatints. She had a studio in Chicago's 57th Street Art Colony.
In the 1920s she helped form an "art for art's sake" group called the Cor Ardens along with Szukalski, Carl Hoeckner, Ramon Shiva, and Gerrit V. Sinclair. Traveling with friends all over the United States, Europe, and Mexico, she was by then well-known for "forceful painting in oils, but also for her ability to express in the exquisite art of the copper plate ⦠an individual style through a simple and dignified treatment of her subject matter." (Palos Journal, May 1929)
During the Great Depression (1929-39), Levy supervised the Easel Painting Division and Art Gallery of the Illinois Art Project of the WPA. She also supervised the Easel Painting Division for the Federal Arts Project a decade later.
For two years during World War II, Levy worked as a meteorological map draftsman and her subsequent work developed along more modern lines.
She traveled extensively in the US, Europe, and North Africa and summered La Jolla, California for several years before making it her home in 1950. She served on the board of the San Diego Museum of Art (then the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery) and taught at the La Jolla Museum School of Arts and Crafts (1961âÂÂ62). Also at the time, she began a close relationship with the modernist artist Dorothy Stratton King, a La Jolla resident with whom she shared a passion for rich color and strong form.
Levy experimented heavily in her final decade in linear and highly abstract printmaking and enamels.
Levy never married. After a long and distinguished career, she died in La Jolla in 1974. Her papers are held by the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
Chicago Society of Artists, president and board member <br> Chicago Society of Etchers, vice president and board member <br> Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, board member <br> Arts Club of Chicago, vice president and member <br> Works Progress Administration Art Project Gallery, supervisor <br> Easel Painting Division for the Federal Art Project, supervisor <br> San Diego Museum of Art (then the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery), board member <br> Enamel professor, Art Center of La Jolla
1916 Goupil & Cie Gallery, New York <br> 1923 Milwaukee Art Institute, Wisconsin <br> 1924 Philadelphia Print Club, Pennsylvania <br> 1924 Art Club, Washington, DC <br> 1924 Godspeed's Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts <br> 1924 Grand Rapids Art Gallery, Grand Rapids, Michigan <br> 1926 Library of Congress, Washington, DC <br> 1929 Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA <br> 1931 Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois <br> 1932 Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC <br> 1933âÂÂ34 Century of Progress, Chicago Art Institute, Illinois <br> 1934 John H Vanderpoel Gallery, Chicago, Illinois <br> 1948 Grinnel College, Iowa <br> 1955 La Jolla Art Center, San Diego, California <br> 1957 Jonson Gallery, University New Mexico <br> 1960 Long Beach Museum, California
Pan Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, honorable mention (etching), 1915 <br> Robert Rice Jenkins Prize for Painting, Art Institute of Chicago, 1923 <br> Chicago Society of Artists Exhibition, gold medal, 1928 <br> International Exhibition of Prints, Art Institute of Chicago, etcher's prize, 1930 <br> American Artists, Art Institute of Chicago, honorable mention, 1930 <br> Illinois State Exhibition, purchase prize <br> Coronado Artists Association, first prize, 1952, 1956, 1957 <br> Del Mar County Fair Art Show, first prize, 1953 <br> San Diego Fine Arts Guild, honorable mention, 1955 and 1957 <br> La Jolla Art Center, print award, 1957
Art Institute of Chicago <br> Bibliotéque National, Paris <br> Chicago Municipal College <br> Davenport Municipal Art Gallery <br> La Jolla Museum of Art <br> Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego <br> Long Beach Museum of Art <br> Los Angeles County Museum of Art <br> Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama <br> National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. <br> Portland Art Museum, Oregon Smithsonian Institution <br> Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas <br> University of New Mexico <br> US Library of Congress <br> Vanderpoel College