Szczecin Harbour

Julo Levin is one of the most interesting representatives of the Szczecin avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s. His individual style reminiscent of the German Expressionism was gradually formed in the early 1920s. Levin started his academic education in Szczecin, attending an evening painting course organised by the School of Applied Arts. His curiosity and desire to confront own searches with the actions of the avant-garde artists in other, vigorously operating centres of art, forced young Levin to leave his home town in 1919 to continue artistic studies at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. Later, following his master Johan Thorn Prikker, he travelled to Munich and enrolled with the Munich academy in 1921. When Johan Thorn Prikker was appointed professor of the Düsseldorf Academy in 1923, Julo Levin moved there and completed his education with a diploma in 1926. The impact of Thorn Prikker's art, artistic contacts with the authors forming a part of the Rheinische Sezession and Das Junge Rheinland shaped his Expressionist style. The painter visited Szczecin a number of times; together with Max Kühn, Egon Engelien Kurt Schwerdtfeger, Joachim Utech and Else Mögelin he was a part of the Das neue Pommern (New Pomerania) group. In 1933, his art was branded “degenerate” and he was banned from artistic work. Levin died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The landscape motives frequently present in Julo Levin’s work include harbours in Szczecin and Marseille. The only oil painting held by the National Museum in Szczecin is the view of the harbour in the Oder metropolis from the time of the Weimar Republic, painted with broad brush strokes and using simplified forms, which is a representative example of the artist’s mature style.

Dariusz Kacprzak