Maya Cohen Levy

A Journey in the Wake of the Crow, railroad ties and painted aluminum sculpture by Maya Cohen Levy, 1990, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel. Maya Cohen Levy (; born 1955), also known as Maya Cohen-Levy, is an Israeli painter and sculptor.

Life and work

Maya Cohen Levy was born in Tel Aviv. She studied philosophy at Tel Aviv University from 1973 to 1974. From 1975 to 1979, she pursued advanced studies at the High School for Art in Tel Aviv. In 1983, she went to Japan to study calligraphy and sumi-e painting.

Heavily pregnant in 1984, she was told by a senior artist in the Kalisher School of Art, "You'll never be an artist now." She said this made her feel terrible, but also strengthened: "We were operating in a male environment, in a culture that believed that the great artists are men. It doesn't matter what your feminist views were, in the end you were left with that. The way to success was to adopt that attitude and not to be a mother. Women who wanted to enter the field had to be like that." In the 1980s, after gaining a stipend to work at a center in the United States, she said that she would attend with her daughter, and was sent rules, which included "no children or pets". The paintings used the theme of ponds in various forms. The aim of the project was to connect Talmudic knowledge with artistic creation. She had painted other works with the same title 2000–2002.

The characteristic of her work is a complexity of paint streaks, which have used organic images such as the honeycomb, the palm tree and the sunflower, where her discovery of the golden spiral organisation of the plant's seeds led to an exploration of the Islamic tradition, which counterbalanced her initial influence from Abstract Expressionism and resulted in depictions of upside-down trees, whose branches thus appear to be roots.

Her work includes paintings, sculptures, installations and books in collaboration with writers and poets. She has taught for 25 years in schools including Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem and the Kalisher Art School in Tel Aviv.

Levy lives in Tel Aviv.

Exhibitions Tel Aviv Museum of Art Israel Art Museum in Jerusalem

Awards

Ministry of Culture and Education in Israel Dan Sandel Sculpture Award in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art The Painting Award of the Israel Art Museum in Jerusalem

Collections Tel Aviv Museum The Jewish Museum, New York

Notes and references