Ben Shahn
Levana
1966

Name: Levana
Brand: Ben Shahn
Price: 650 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

This elegant Ben Shahn lithograph entitled “Levana” was created in 1966. It was printed by Gemini G. E. L., Los Angeles, California, in an edition of 150. There are two small embossed (circular blind stamps) in the paper just under the signature. This impression is signed in red ink and has the artist’s red chop. “Levana, the Roman goddess, held Shahn’s interest over a span of many years. He used a version of the subject for the 1964 frontispiece to Wendell Berry’s ‘November Twenty-six, Nineteen Hundred Sixty-three,’ The goddess also occurs as an illustration in Louis Untermeyer’s ‘Love Sonnets,’ where she is furnished with the heavenly setting that the legend assigns to her. “Levana (from Latin, to raise up) is ‘The Roman goddess that performed for the new-born infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness’ by having him lifted off the ground to ‘Behold what is greater than yourselves!’ She was also the goddess who watched over human education: ‘Not the poor machinery that moves by spelling-books and grammars, but by that mighty system of central forces hidden in the deep bosom of human life, which by passion, by strife, by temptation, by the energies of resistance, works forever upon children.” – Prescott BEN SHAHN (1898-1969) printmaker, painter, muralist, was born in Kovno, Lithuania, in 1898. He arrived in the United States in 1908 with his family and settled in Brooklyn. He was apprenticed to a lithographer after finishing elementary school at the age of fourteen. As an apprentice, he spent long hours of work grinding stones and lettering stones. He once stated that he made "thousands and thousands of letters." It is fortunate that he liked the history of alphabets because he would use them throughout his artistic career. Often the subject of a drawing became a print and/or a painting. Shahn believed in hard work and craftsmanship - qualities that would stay with him throughout his career.

Creator:

Ben Shahn (1898-1969, American)

Creation Year:

1966

Dimensions:

Height: 30 in (76.2 cm)Width: 22 in (55.88 cm)Depth: 0.94 in (2.39 cm)

Medium:

Lithograph

Movement & Style:

Modern

Period:

1960-1969