Levy, Julien (1906-81), New York dealer and collector who played a vital role in introducing European avant-garde art, especially Surrealism, to America. Having become interested in contemporary art at Harvard, he travelled to Paris in 1927 to experience it at first hand. There he met Man Ray, who introduced him to the work of Atget; and in November 1930, with Berenice Abbott, Levy organized an Atget exhibition at the New York Weyhe Gallery where he worked on his return. In 1931 he opened his own gallery at 602, Madison Avenue with a retrospective show of American photography that embraced early daguerreotypes and the work of figures such as Brady, Käsebier, Clarence White, Stieglitz, Steichen, and Strand. In 1932 he mounted a modern photography exhibition with pictures by Bing, Brassaï, Kertész, Lerski, Lee Miller, and Peterhans, and Man Ray's first large New York show. The following year he introduced Cartier-Bresson to the American public. The gallery continued, at three successive locations, until 1949. Levy's collection of c.2, 000 photographs (including 362 by Atget) was donated to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2001.
— Robin Lenman
Bibliography
- Hambourg, M. M., ‘From 291 to the Museum of Modern Art: Photography in New York, 1910-37’, in The New Vision: Photography between the Wars (1989).
- Jacobs, L., and Schaffner, I. (eds.), Julien Levy: Portrait of an Art Gallery (1998)
