David Levine

David Levine was considered by many to be the greatest caricaturist of the late 20th century, best known for his ink caricatures that for decades graced the pages of the New York Review of Books. During that time, few individuals occupying seats of political, academic, or cultural power escaped Levine’s keen satirical eye. Among his extensive archive are images of Vladimir Putin in a king’s robe, George W. Bush perched on the knee of Dick Cheney and, most famously, Lyndon B. Johnson exposing the scar on his belly from a recent gall bladder operation, transformed by Levine’s pen into a map of Vietnam. Levine’s sensitive and more naturalistic watercolors captured regular people in everyday urban settings; a self-proclaimed communist until the end of his days, he privately confessed to taking greatest pride in these depictions of garment factory workers and painterly renderings of scenes at Coney Island. Levine studied under Hans Hofmann, an instrumental figure in Abstract Expressionism.