Painting

The work presents the Oder River landscape in Szczecin. In the foreground, we can see a fragment of the bay of the Hanza Bridge (nowadays the Długi Bridge) over the Western Oder, connecting the Łasztownia River with the old city boulevard. This oldest Szczecin bridge from the 13th century was presented by the artist in its modern form of 1903. In April 1945 the Wehrmacht forces, withdrawing from the city, blew it up. In the post-war period, the currently existing Długi Bridge of Jan III Sobieski was built in its place. In the background, we can see the steel railway drawbridge connecting the railway station with Kępa Parnicka, renovated at the beginning of the 20th century and also destroyed at the end of WWII. Nowadays, a bridge reconstructed in the 1960s is located there. The frame of Szczecin seen from the side of the Łasztownia River no longer exists in the form in which it was presented in the painting. The artist, using the expressive language of simplified, synthetic forms, managed to capture the character of the pre-war city. The author of the watercolour is Julo Levin, whose father was a cloth merchant of Jewish origin. He studied painting in Szczecin, Essen, Munich and Düsseldorf. In the second half of the 1920s and in the first years of the following decade of the 20th century, Levin was active in the Rheine region where he engaged in leftist avant-garde movements. He also kept in touch with artists from Szczecin. After the national socialists came to power, Expressionist paintings of Levin were deemed the manifestation of the “degenerate art.” The artist was banned from painting and displaying his works. At that time, he worked as a street cleaner, cemetery worker and was also employed in several Jewish schools in Düsseldorf and Berlin where he taught drawing. In 1943, he was sent to Auschwitz where he died.

Dariusz Kacprzak