Kurt Lewy

KURT LEWY (Essen, Germany, 1898 - Freiburg im Breisgau, 1963).
"Composition," 1962.
Watercolor and pastel on rice paper.
Signed with initials and dated in the lower right corner.
With label of the De Vuyst Gallery, Belgium, on the back.
Measurements: 52 x 58 cm; 74 x 80 cm (frame).

Kurt Lewy is one of the most emblematic figures of Belgian geometric abstraction. A multifaceted artist (he is, in addition to being a painter, an enameller and illustrator), Lewy studied at the Folkwangschule in Essen and from 1919 to 1923 at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Berlin. He continued his studies in enamel sculpture in Pforzheim in 1924. Lewy taught graphic arts at the Folkwangschule from 1929 to 1933. In 1935 he settled in Brussels, where he was arrested in 1940. He escaped from prison in 1942 and returned to Brussels. He was arrested a second time in 1944 and imprisoned in Mechelen until the liberation of Belgium. With World War II behind him, he renounced German expressionism and turned to abstractionism, becoming part of the Belgian group "Abstract Art" founded by Jo Delahaut in 1952. In 1952 an important exhibition of Lewy's enamel paintings and miniatures was organized at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Immediately one day later, Lewy changed his artistic language and moved into geometric abstraction. Today his work is in numerous private collections, as well as in the Jewish Museum of Belgium. Among his most renowned exhibitions were at the Folkwang Museum in Essen in 1926 and 1960, the Jewish Museum in 1934, the Suermondt Museum in Aachen in 1955, the Düsseldorf Kunshalle in 1955, the Apollo Gallery in Brussels in 1946-1954, the Palace of Fine Arts in Brussels in 1952, the Art Gallery in London in 1929, the Basel 1934 and Davos 1934, as well as others in New York.