Levy, Julien.

Julien Levy (1906-1981) was a pioneering New York art dealer of the 1930s and 1940s. He was introduced to the art world in Paris by Marcel Duchamp, whom he had met in New York in 1926. In Paris he met photographers and artists, including Man Ray, Berenice Abbot, and Joella Haweis, daughter of Dadaist muse Mina Loy, who became his wife. Upon his return to the United States, Levy worked briefly at the Weyhe Gallery before opening the Julien Levy Gallery at 602 Madison Avenue. In 1932, Levy mounted “Surrealisme,” which introduced the Surrealist art movement to New York.

Levy was born in 1906 in New York. He attended Harvard University, where he studied museum administration as a student of Paul Sachs. He did not complete his course of study, however, deciding instead to travel to France in 1927. There he met and befriended artists Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and others, and was introduced to the work of French photographer Eugene Atget. It Atget’s photographs, that inspired him to become an art dealer. While in France, he also met his wife, Joella Haweis, and her mother, Mina Loy, who would eventually serve as his gallery representative in Paris.

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