MASTERPIECES FROM THE BEN URI COLLECTION
EMMANUEL LEVY (1900-1986) CRUCIFIXION
Signed and dated (lower right): Emmanuel Levy 1942
EMMANUEL LEVY
EEmmanuel Levy’s Crucifixion (1942) stands as a harrowing visual indictment of the persecution of European Jewry during the Holocaust, expressed through a powerful fusion of religious iconography and modern historical trauma Executed during the Second World War, this work reflects Levy’s deeply pers-
An oral response to the atrocities unfolding across Nazi-occupied Europe amplified by the experience of his German-Jewish refugee wife, Ursula Leo Levy’s painting draws on the central Christian motif of the crucifixion, but subverts it by presenting a visibly Jewish male figure This figure, distinguished by his tallit (prayer shawl), tefillin, and sidelocks, is nailed to the cross beneath a sign reading Jude in red, blood-like script The martyrdom of the Jewish body is set against a bleak, crowded cemetery of white crosses stretching into the background, evoking both the mass deaths of wartime and the complicity or indifference of a Christianised Europe. Levy thus collapses the historical persecution of Jews with contemporary genocide, aligning Jewish suffering with a universal symbol of pain and sacrifice while critically interrogating Christian Europe's role in the unfolding catastrophe The expressionist modelling and stark palette heighten the emotive force of the composition, revealing Levy’s mastery of figuration as a tool for protest This work, painted at the height of war, remains one of the most potent artistic responses to the Holocaust within British Jewish art
Emmanuel Levy was born to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in Hightown, Manchester, England in 1900 Like Jacob Kramer, he was one of a small group of Jewish artists, whose families, fleeing persecution, restrictive legislation and economic hardship settled in the north of England as a part of a
A wider wave of Jewish migration to Britain at the close of the nineteenth century Hightown was immortalized by the Jewish writer Louis Golding in his best-selling novel Magnolia Street (1932), which Levy later adapted as a radio play His father was the beadle at the Great Synagogue, Cheetham Hill, and he attended the local Jews’ Free School, before studying at Manchester School of Art under Adolphe Valette (c 1918), together with L S Lowry (whose portrait he drew), as well as at St Martin’s School of Art in London, and in Paris. H returned to Manchester for his first solo show in 1925. His early work included Jewish subject matter, such as The Mourners (Sitting Shiva) (1928, Ben Uri Collection), executed in a semi-Cubist manner. In 1928, Levy was appointed a special instructor in life drawing at Manchester University School of Architecture upon the recommendation of Valette, whom he succeeded
He also gave popular public demonstrations in portrait painting From 1929, for several years, he was Art Critic for Manchester City News and the Evening News, and his 60-year career was so closely associated with his native city that Lord Ardwick described him as ‘a Manchester man through and through. But he continued, there is nothing provincial or even distinctly English in his work He is a citizen of the world’ Although he experimented with Cubism and Surrealism, Levy abandoned these styles in favour of naturalism, specializing in figurative work exploring the human condition His wife, Ursula Leo (1915–1984), one of his pupils and a painter in her own right, was a German-Jewish refugee from Nazism During the Second World War, he painted Crucifixion (1942), a cri de coeur against Jewish persecution under the Nazis in mainland Europe He held six solo exhibitions in Manchester between 1925 and 1963, with further solo shows in London, including at Ben Uri (1953, 1978 and 1989), where his work was also shown from 1935 onwards in numerous group shows. A further solo show was held in Brunner, Norwich, in 1952. Retrospectives were held at Salford City Art Gallery (1948), Fieldborne Galleries, London (1976), and Stockport Art Gallery (1982) He also exhibited with the AIA (Artists' International Association), including in 1953 and 1954 Emmanuel Levy died in London, England, in 1986 His work is represented in UK collections including the National Portrait Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery, Salford Museum and Art Gallery, and the Whitworth In 2014, Ben Uri Gallery curated a posthumous retrospective, Made in Manchester: Emmanuel Levy, at Manchester Jewish Museum
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