From November 16th, 2006 to January 29th, 2007, the Musée Maillol organized the first retrospective of Ra’anan Lévy’s work in France.

After studying at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Ra’anan Levy moved to Paris and spent time in France, England and Israel. His painting style nods to the London School, which chose to reinstate representational art at a time when abstraction was the dominant style. Ra’anan Levy’s paintings of nudes, landscapes and empty apartments were studies in pure color and rich pigments. 

The maturity of Ra’anan Levy’s technique and the inventive quality of the artist’s paintings are striking. He questions the world of scents, the transience of time, and the imprint of humanity. And it is indeed man that is at the center of every artwork. When Levy sets out to paint a series of simple washbasins, they become a mirror of the human figure. A series of manhole covers transform into points of departure to a world in which the boundaries between the animate and the inanimate, the mineral and the organic, presence and absence, are dissolved.

Nearly one hundred works can be seen in this exhibition. “The Double Room” bears witness to the atmospheres and research pursued by Ra’anan Levy, specifically emphasizing introspection, the extraction of forms, and pictorial ambitions. The artist aimed to go beyond the image with each painting, to reach the representation of intimate and complex sensations.

The touring exhibition was presented at the Museum of Modern Art in Tel Aviv between March and May of 2007, and then at the Museum of Russian Art in St Petersburg between June and July of 2007.