University of Montana hosts exhibit featuring master printmaker and painter

The University of Montana is hosting an exhibition of works by noted artist Morton Levin through Oct. 17. 

The Montana Museum of Art and Culture event is titled “Il Maestro! Works by Morton Levin, a Centennial Celebration.”

Levin (1923-2020) was a master printmaker and painter whose artistic journey was impacted by the effects of war, love, family and teaching. The exhibition presents a selection from the artist’s vast work from the 1930s through 2005, including war drawings, paintings and prints in a diversity of styles.

The artist fought in World War II, experienced the fervor of modernism in Europe and the United States, and received an education in the arts through the G.I. Bill.

“While his contemporaries in the U.S. were delving into abstract expressionism, minimalism, and conceptualism, Levin devoted himself to the expressive human figure in the post-World War II period,” said Nicole Evans, the exhibit’s chief curator and director of curatorial affairs at the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art in Great Falls. Evans wrote the accompanying exhibition catalog.

“We are pleased to share the expansive work of this prodigious modernist to audiences in western Montana and grateful to the Montana Art Gallery Directors Association for traveling this wonderful exhibition statewide,” said Rafael Chacón, the MMAC’s Suzanne and Bruce Crocker Director.

Born in New York, Levin studied in France before completing college and settling in San Francisco, where he became known for his Expressionist paintings, woodcuts and etchings. His work is included in museums, libraries and public and private collections throughout the U.S. and abroad. 

Publications on his life and work include “Morton Levin: Graphic Arts (1939-2012),” “Morton Levin: Drawings (1939-2014)” and “A Fantasy of Beasts Revealed in Great Art: What is Illusory is Made Real.”

Dovetailing with the main UM exhibition is “Graphic Work by Morton Levin,” a smaller show curated by Derick Wycherly, the MMAC associate curator and collections manager, in the museum’s Michele and Loren Hansen Gallery. 

The museum will host the screening of the short documentary “A Keen Observer” by Apo Bazzidi at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, July 30, followed by an interview by MMAC director Rafael Chacón with Alanna Zrimsek, Levin’s widow and partner. The film features Levin in conversation about his work and life as an artist and war veteran.