Moses Levy Biography
Moses Levy (Tunis, 3 February 1885 – Viareggio, 2 April 1968) was an Italian painter. Born to an English father and an Italian mother, he studied in an Italian school in Tunis but at the age of ten, for reasons of his mother's health, he moved with his family to Italy. Due to the fascist racial laws Moses Levy had to leave Italy, moved to Nice and later returned to Tunis. At the end of the Second World War he moved first to Paris and then to Florence; in 1961 he moved to Viareggio which gave him a gold medal. In this period, in his little house/studio on the beach of Viareggio, he was in constant contact with the painter Gualtiero Passani (Carrara 1926), much younger than him, but whose creative vigor and talent in choosing colors he greatly appreciated. In 1900 he enrolled at the Institute of Fine Arts in Lucca and found Lorenzo Viani as a fellow student. Levy and Viani also attended courses together in Florence at the Nude School of the Academy of Fine Arts held by the painter Giovanni Fattori. In this period, Levy became passionate about graphics and came into contact with Renato Natali and the group of artists who met at the Caffè Bardi in Livorno, particularly dedicated to lithography, drawing and etching. In 1907 he was invited to the Venice Biennale, where he exhibited some engravings. He often returns to Tunis where he begins to move away from his Tuscan education and assimilates the strong colors of his homeland, painting subjects linked to the local culture. In 1911 he organized his first personal exhibition at the Tunis Chamber of Commerce. He made numerous trips to Europe, stopping several times in Paris where he also managed to exhibit in 1932.
