SYMPH O NY OF RAIN
AlexLEVIN Levin ALEX
M
usic usually arouses certain thoughts and feelings in me, gives rise to memories. And this image that sprung in my imagination can be drawn. Music has always been my inspiration. The oil paints are my notes, and the brush is my musical instrument. “A Good painting is a music and a melody which intellect only can appreciate,” said the great Italian artist, Michelangelo Buonarroti. Ilya Repin noted that the colourful flavour of Rembrandt’s paintings sounds like marvellous orchestra music. It’s hard to name a composer, who has not reflected his fascination with nature in his music. The sound of rain, songs of the birds, the iridescent water streams sparkling in the sun… All these sounds of nature inspired composers to produce their musical masterpieces. Music often brings various images of nature to mind. Nature and art are inseparable because nature enters each person’s life forever from childhood. Claude Debussy, for instance, was an exceptional master of sound painting. The composer was deeply influenced not only by music but also paintings and poetry. In the search for new means of musical expressiveness, Claude Debussy made a number of discoveries in and around harmony. With the help of new and unusual techniques, the composer conveys nature’s tiniest details – the play of light and shadow, sun glares, the splash of streams… Listening to musical work can heighten people’s senses and unite them. Human hearts are connected with an incredible symphony of sounds. The paintings portray cathedrals, palaces, bridges, gondoliers on their amazing boats – light, gentle, big-nosed birds that barely touch the water and shudder at the slightest wave. And everything, from the sky to the ground is inundated with the sun. It all appears instantly to the sounds of divine music of the brush and paints on the painting. Each paintings was inspired by the music of different composers. One painting completes the other, one composer is replaced by another, the misty morning transforms into a rainy evening and star-filled sky over the lagoon: a puzzle of forty paintings describing the dream-city on water – VENICE! I compare Venice’s frailty with the drops streaming down the window. This pearl-city descends lower and lower beneath the water surface almost every day. And all that is left to do is imprint this moment in our memories – this moment of joy. Like a raindrop, one day it can completely disappear underwater in an instant, and I find it important, as an artist, to stop time on my canvases, and, with their help, father new paintings under the name ‘A Symphony of Rain’.
Symphony of rain O
nce, Frédéric Chopin and George Sand watched raindrops streaming down the window, and Chopin noticed so much music and improvisation in the drops. It is because we see a second of this moment and then everything changes. The Venetian lagoon has its own unique light and colours, especially when it’s raining and everything is immersed into a mystical mist. I tried to depict how, through the streaming raindrops and to Vivaldi’s, Bach’s, Handel’s and others’ music, a painting is born – one that you can not only see but also hear. At times, when paints stream down the canvas like raindrops, they bare new compositions and improvisations. That was when I had the idea to create a series of musical paintings called ‘A Symphony of Rain’. I draw the music of the rain!
Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, Autumn When I seek another word for ‘music’, I never find any other word than “Venice” Friedrich Nietzsche 3
MOZART
“This was Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap, in whose insalubrious air the arts once rankly and voluptuously blossomed, where composers have been inspired to lulling tones of somniferous eroticism.� --Thomas Mann
Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 20
Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D minor “The perennial wonder of Venice is to peer at herself in her canals and find that she exists – incredible as it seems. It is the same reassurance that a looking glass offers us: the guarantee that we are real” Mary McCarthy
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GRIEG
“Do you know that our soul is composed of harmony?” Leonardo DaVinci
Grieg - Peer Gynt Suite No. 1
Schubert - Serenade “Music and painting bring people together. It allows us to experience the same emotions. People everywhere are the same in heart and spirit. No matter what language we speak, what color we are, the form of our politics or the expression of our love and our faith, music and art proves: We are the same.� John Denver
SCHUBERT
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“If you read a lot, nothing is as great as you’ve imagined. Venice is Venice is better.” Fran Lebowitz
Beethoven - Symphony No. 3
Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 “A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.� Louis Nizer
BEETHOVEN
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TCHAIKOVSKY
Tchaiko
Handel - Concerti Gr
ovsky - Symphony No. 6
rossi No. 1-12 11
Without Jerusalem, the land of Israel is as a body without a soul. ~ Elhanan Leib Lewinsky
Bach - St Matthew Passion thoven
Chopin – Piano Concerto No.2 13
CHOPIN
“Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go” Truman Capote
Chopin - Nocturne No. 20
Chopin - Nocturne No. 2 “The perennial wonder of Venice is to peer at herself in her canals and find that she exists – incredible as it seems. It is the same reassurance that a looking glass offers us: the guarantee that we are real” Mary McCarthy
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GERSHWIN
“In the winter, Venice is like an abandoned theater. The play is finished, but the echoes remain” Arbit Blatas
Gershwin - Rhapsody In Blue
Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 12 “Venice is the most romantic place in the world but it’s even better when there is no one around” Woody Allen
MOZART
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VIVALDI
“My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require.� Edward Elgar
Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, Winter
Vivaldi - Concerto for two mandolins in G major “The surface of Venice is constantly metamorphosing [and] painting Venice is almost like being a restorer, peeling off the layers to find the picture after picture underneath� Arbit Blatash
VENICE
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Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata
SYMPHONY OF RAIN “The artist brings something into the world that didn�t exist before, and he does it without destroying something else.” John Updike
Bach - Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor
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CHOPIN
“Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all.� Helmut Walcha
Chopin - Nocturne No. 2
Vivaldi – Concerti della Natura “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” Leonardo da Vinci
VIVALDI
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“If Venice sinks, the collection should be preserved somewhere in the vicinity of Venice� Peggy Guggenheim
Vivaldi - 12 Sonatas for violin
Gluck - Melodie from Orfeo and Euridica “In Venice, Tass’s echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, And music meets not always now the ear” Lord Byron
GLUCK
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Vivaldi - Winter
SYMPHONY OF RAIN “Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art.� Neil Gaiman
Debussy - La Mer
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BRAHMS
“Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy” Lord Byron
Brahms - Symphony No.3 Allegretto
Bach - Overture No. 3 in D Major ‘Air’ “The perennial wonder of Venice is to peer at herself in her canals and find that she exists – incredible as it seems. It is the same reassurance that a looking glass offers us: the guarantee that we are real” Mary McCarthy
BACH
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WAGNER
“An orange gem resting on a blue glass plate: it’s Venice seen from above” Henry James
Wagner - La cabalgata de las Valkirias
Grieg - Piano Concerto in A minor “It is always assumed that Venice is the ideal place for a honeymoon. This is a grave error. To live in Venice or even to visit it, means that you fall in love with the city itself. There is nothing left over in your heart for anyone else� Peggy Guggenheim
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VIVALDI
Vivaldi - Spring
Gershwin - Rhapsody In Blue “A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him� Arthur Symons
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PAGANINI Paganini - Concerto per Violin
Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto E Minor “Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors� Henry James
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Chopin - Piano Concerto 1 and 2
SYMPHONY OF RAIN “Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.” Oscar Wilde
Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 25
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MOZART Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 9
Dvorak - Romance for piano and violin
“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.�
Victor Hugo
DVORAK
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SCHUBERT
Take a better photo !!!
“A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.� Leopold Stokowski
Schubert - Ave Maria
Rachmaninov - Elegie in E-flat minor “A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.� Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
RACHMANINOV
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S Y M P H ONY OF R A I N Born in 1974, Alex Levin, is an artist whose works are admired worldwide. Originally from Kiev, Ukraine, has been displayed in numerous private, corporate and institutional collections in the U.S., Israel, France, Italy, Ukraine, Switzerland and Belgium. His work focuses on surrealism and realism and features a range of work using oil, acrylic, pencil, charcoal and tempera paints. One of his favorite and most used techniques is 16th century multi-layering technique using tempera and oil without using brush strokes.
Alex Levin
Nado new pic
Alex Levin eventually immigrated to Israel and served three years in the Israel Army. In 1997, he entered the industrial and web design program in Tel Aviv which was a great benefit for his art work. Levin’s work has been acknowledged by many influential figures, including: actor and producer Richard Gere, Madonna, jazz player Oscar Peterson, and former president of Israel Ezer Weizman.
Currently Alex Levin is working on the following themes: “Tradition of Jewish Heritage”, “Tel Aviv - The Hill of Spring”, “Venice through the mask’s eyes” and “Symphony of Rain”. “Tradition of Jewish Heritage” is a collection of work of Jerusalem’s holy Western Wall and its surrounding religious neighborhood. In 2007 Alex received the Medal Award for the Contribution to the Judaic Art from the Knesset. “The Spring Hill” is inspired by his favorite season, and is devoted to Tel Aviv - its people, building architecture, sea and beaches. It depicts people against snow white buildings on sunny days with clear skies. “Venice through the mask’s eyes,” takes a completely unique approach and presents the viewer with the most prominent feature of Venetian carnival – the Mask. “Symphony of Rain“. Each paintings was inspired by the music of different composers. One painting completes the other, one composer is replaced by another, the misty morning transforms into a rainy evening and star-filled sky over the lagoon: a puzzle of forty paintings describing the dream-city on water – VENICE!
www.ArtLevin.com contact@artlevin.com (718) 415-3127 USA (052) 846-9590 Israel
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For over 10 years, Alex was studying new art styles and techniques with Professor Baruch Elron who was the Chairman of Israel Artist Association.