Geula Levi – Feelings in Colour

Geula Levi is an Israeli artist, born in Israel, whose work reflects an ongoing journey of searching, experimenting and creative growth. A graduate of a teachers' college in fashion teaching, she taught for 29 years in high schools and at a teachers' college. Her background in fashion has shaped her art: it shows in the sense of movement, the flow, the compositions and the rich use of colour.

Levi lived in New York from 1974 to 1978, and again from 1991 to 1995. In 1974–1975 she studied painting in New York with the artist Chava Mann, and later, from 1983 to 1986, at the Bat Yam Institute of Art. Her teachers also included the artists Aharon Alkalay, Eliyahu Gat and Gatenio. During her years in New York she showed her work in exhibitions in the city.

Her path began with classical, realistic painting and grew into figurative painting and urban scenes of the cities she visited, above all Jerusalem. The city, which became a source of inspiration for her after the Six-Day War, took a central place in her work and appears in many different compositions. Her engagement with Jerusalem deepened even during the years she lived in New York.

Over the years Levi has worked in many styles and developed a personal visual language of intense colour, movement and rich compositions. Her oil paintings on canvas stand out for the tension between the quiet calm of their subjects and the force and storm of their colours. The meeting of emotion, imagination and reality gives her work depth and opens it to many interpretations.

Later, Levi turned gradually to abstract painting, wishing to widen the bounds of artistic expression and to explore new techniques and materials. In a workshop led by Bruria Hasbar she went on developing her artistic language and arrived at the abstract style of her later work.

Geula Levi's work joins artistic tradition with creative freedom, looking at reality with emotional expression, and visual harmony with stormy colour. Her paintings invite the viewer to experience the world through colour, movement and feeling.