I couldn’t find much autobiographical information on the artist Saul Levine. He was born in New York in the 1915 and he studied at the Corcoran School of Art and Design and graduated from Yale’s School of Fine Arts. It appears that he began his career in the late 30s, doing paintings of everyday life during the Great Depression. He painted murals for two post offices in Massachusetts and his paintings were exhibited in the Whitney, the Carnegie, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts. In the 1950s, he painted a handful of paperback covers. Searching the web, I found a death notice for a Saul Levine who was born in 1915 and died in 2010. However, I don’t know if that notice was for the same Saul Levine.
Below are a few of his paperback covers, followed by some of his paintings:
Through the Shattered Lens 
I’d love to see the chronology of those pieces, since the styles and techniques are wildly different. If the signatures on some of the pieces weren’t similar, I would have thought they were done by different artists with the same name. Very interesting find!
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Thank you! The paintings are all from the 30s and 40s, while the covers are from the 50s.
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Thanks, Erin. That might help solve the mystery of the varied styles, since the early works (the paintings and/or mural details) are either purposely or naturally primitive, and the cover art looks schooled. And I don’t mean that as a negative. The artist may have decided to change his game through art school.
All of it is very strong stuff, especially the piece on the bottom (the dark bus or subway) and the tenth piece from the top (two farmers plus a guy who looks like “the man”, coming to foreclose). Whoever Levine was, he was good.
I’m probably reading far too much into this, but I’d bet there’s a poignant story here somewhere, with Levine knocking out some great early naive work, and then investing in art school, and ending up doing pulp covers to pay the rent.
Where’s a damned screenwriter when you need one?!
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What’s interesting is that, even though the styles are different, the men on the covers have the same facial features as the men in the paintings.
The painting of the farmer was called Dustbowl and it was done in 1939. The soldier talking to the three men was called “Tales of War” and was done in 1941. The Man in the black jacket is called Man In The Street was done in 1942. I’m not sure when The Subway and Brooklyn Landscape were painted.
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I should have guessed about the title of Dustbowl. Barren landscape; dead produce in one guy’s hand, plus the guy in the suit, which always means bad news.
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