William Auerbach-Levy

William Auerbach-Levy (1889-1964)
"A Normandy Fishermen"
Dry-point, n.d.
LFAC #079

Biography

William Auerbach-Levy was born in Brest-Litovsk, Russia, in 1889. His parents added the surname Levy to Auerbach after their emigration to the United States in 1894. He was educated at City College where he won an art scholarship to study in Paris. There he studied at the Julian Academy on a two-year fellowship. Auerbach-Levy taught life drawing and etching at the Educational Alliance Art School and the National Academy School of Fine Arts after his return to New York.

Auerbach-Levy was known for his genre paintings, portraits, etchings and caricatures. He exhibited widely and won numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1929. His art works are in many nationally known museum and library collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress.

Auerbach-Levy was also the author of several books about the art of caricature. He was well-known for his caricatures of prominent personalities which appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and American Heritage. He particularly enjoyed the theatre which provided his greatest source of subject matter for caricaturing celebrities. His illustrations also appeared in books and newspapers. In 1932 he created an etching of George Washington’s courtship for the United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission. Miscellaneous articles, exhibit catalogs and documents chronicling his life are part of the Manuscript Collections of the Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C.

William Auerbach-Levy died at the age of 75 on June 29, 1964, in Ossining, New York. His wife, Florence Von Wien, co-author of one of his books, preceded him in death in 1957.

The etching by Auerbach-Levy in the Fine Arts Collection was donated to Luther College in 1941 by the family of Dr. Nils E. Remmen. The Remmen Collection is one of the most significant collections of art works in the Fine Arts Collection. Remmen was a Luther alumnus who was a leading ophthalmologist in the Chicago area. He died in 1926.

Ref: Auerbach-Levy, William and Von Wien, Florence. Is That Me? A Book About Caricature. New York, NY: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1947; Auerbach-Levy, William. The Art of Caricature. Art Book Guild of America, 1947; Sorel, Edward. "Perfectly Simple," in American Heritage, Vol. 37 (June/July 1986), 50-56; Watson, Ernest W. "The Caricatures of William Auerbach-Levy," in Art Instruction, Vol. 2. (April 1938), 5-10; Falk, Peter. Who Was Who in American Art, 1564-1975. Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1999; Obituary, The New York Times, June 30, 1964.

Updated 09/14/2004