SYMPH O NY OF RAIN
AlexLEVIN Levin ALEX
Born in 1975, Alex Levin, is an artist whose works are admired worldwide. Originally from Kiev, Ukraine, has been displayed in numerous private, corporate Born in 1975, Alex Levin, is an artist whose works are admired worldwide. Originally from Kiev, Ukraine, has been displayed in numerous private, corporate and institutional collections worldwide. 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. 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. For over 10 years, Alex was studying new art styles and techniques with Professor Baruch Elron who was the Chairman of Israel Artist Association. 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!
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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“Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all.� Helmut Walcha
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
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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Vivaldi - Four Seasons
“Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.� Johann Sebastian Bach
Chopin - Nocturne No. 2
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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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Copyright Š Art Levin, Inc. New York. All right reserved.
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