David Levine (1926-2009) contributed more than 3,800 caricatures to The New York Review of Books between 1963 and 2007. His work also appeared in Time, Esquire, The New Yorker, and Rolling Stone, among other publications. Levine was an accomplished painter whose canvases included depictions of the daily lives of Brooklyn’s working classes and Coney Island beach-goers. His paintings and caricatures have been exhibited at New York’s Forum Gallery as well as museums around the world.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Levine studied at Temple University, the Tyler School of Art, and the Pratt Institute. With Aaron Shikler, he co-founded the Painting Group in 1958; for over fifty years, this group of amateur and professional artists held work sessions in which they painted models.
Levine began his work in caricatures during the 1950s and started contributing to The Review in 1963, the first year of its publication. His pen-and-ink drawings of politicians, writers, intellectuals, and even abstract ideas soon became identified as the magazine’s signature style. In 2008, he published American Presidents, a collection of his presidential caricatures, which was also the basis for an exhibit of his work that year. Levine’s achievements were recognized with awards from the National Academy of Design, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
The New York Review of Books maintains an online gallery of all of Levine’s caricatures that ran in its pages.
