CARLO LEVI   1902-1975

Carlo Levi, whose career included work as a doctor, painter, poet, novelist and political activist, was born in Torino of a prominent Jewish family. He graduated from the university with a medical degree in 1924. He did not practice medicine except while in the military (1925-1926) and later in Southern Italy (1935-1936) where he was exiled during the war for the conquest of Abissinia.

His interest in painting and political involvement begun at a very early age.  In 1921 he became a member of the National Association for the Interests of Southern Italy and in 1922 he published his first article in the political review “Liberal Revolution”.

In 1924 Levi exhibited his first painting “Arcadia” in Turin, and his first exhibit outside of Italy took place at the Bloomsbury Gallery in London in 1930, followed in 1932 by his first American exhibit at the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts.

From 1931 to 1940 he was a member of the anti-Fascist movement “Justice and Liberty”, first in Italy then in France, after the assasination of the brothers Rosselli,

Carlo and Nello, by order of Mussolini in 1937.  In 1934, he was imprisoned, with other young anti-Fascists, as a consequence of his partecipation in the smuggling of anti-Fascists pamphlets from France to Italy and his role in helping escape to Switzerland some of the partecipants of this risky adventure. In 1935 he was exiled to Souhtern Italy for his opposition to Mussolini’s Imperial aims in Africa. 

After his release he went back to France and continued to work with the Resistance network between France and Italy and returned to Italy in 1941.

 He spent the next two years under the cover of his artistic production while working as a member of the Italian Underground, against the Fascist Government.

 He had received the offer by the American Government, as many Italian intellectuals did, to go to the United States, but he refused to leave Italy.

While in France he had written “Fear of Freedom” which is a statement of his social and political believes and contains his theories and philosophical thoughts about the human condition, religion and the structure of government.  He wrote the story of Lucania

“Christ stopped at Eboli” while hiding in a house in Florence from October 1943 to July 1944, during the Nazi occupation.  The house became a meeting point of members of the Resistance.  (Letter in the Carlo Levi papers at the HRHRC).

After the war Levi worked actively in the reconstruction of Southern Italy. He was the founder and president of the FILELF (Italian Federation for workers’ immigration and their Families).

In 1947 he had an exhibit of his paintings at the Waldenstein Gallery in New York, in conjunction with the presentation of the publication of his book “Christ stopped at Eboli” in its first English translation.

Carlo Levi continued to write books about the living conditions of other parts of Southern Italy, Germany after the war, Russia, China and India. In 1963 he was elected Senator, an office he held until his death. 

The Carlo Levi Foundation was created in Rome, in June 1975.

 It organizes conferences on every aspects of Levi’s life and exhibitions of his paintings.

Some of his paintings were exhibited at the Jewish Museum of New York in 1989.  

The movie of “Christ stopped at Eboli’ was made by director Francesco Rosi, in 1978.

The Carlo Levi Archive is kept at the Central State Archive in Rome.

The manuscripts of his poems are at the Center for Modern and Contemporary Author’s Manuscripts, at the University of Pavia.

The paintings of Lucania are in the Palazzo Lanfranchi at Matera, in the region where Levi was exiled.

Other paintings and his library are kept at the Levi Foundation in Rome. 

The manuscript of “Cristo si e’ fermato a Eboli” is part of the Italian Collections at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center,

the University of Texas at  Austin. 

Books in English transaltion At UT Libraries: 

1.  La doppia notte dei tigli/ The Linden trees. Ist American edition, New York 1962     

2.   Of Fear and Freedom, New York, 1950     

3.    Orologio/The Watch New York  1951      

4.    Words are Stones: impressions of Sicily.  New York 1958   

Other books of interest: 

Gardens and Ghettos, the Art of Jewish Life in Italy, ex. Cat.  Berkeley, University of California Press. 1989 

Susan Zuccotti,  The Italians and the Holocaust, New York, Basic Books Inc. 1987 

Maria De Blasio Wilhelm,  The Other Italy: The Italian Resistance in World War II                                                           

R.J.B. Bosworth,  Mussolini,   Arnold: London and Oxford University Press Inc.   New York, 2002