JOHN LEVEEUntitled.Oil on paper, 1953. 237x529 mm; 9½x21 inches. Signed and dated in ink, upper left recto.Provenance: Possibly Paul Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles, or Esther-Robles Gallery, Los Angeles, with a partial label; private collection, Chicago.Levee (1924-2017) received a master's degree in philosophy from UCLA and subsequently became an aviator in World War II. After the war he decided to stay to work as a painter in Montparnasse, Paris. He later studied art at the Art Center School, Los Angeles and at Académie Julian, Paris from 1949 to 1951.His early painting, like the current work, was inspired by the New York School of abstract expressionism, which included Franz Kline (1910-1962), Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967), Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) and Philip Guston (1913-1980), among others. After a period of hard-edge painting based on geometric abstraction through the 1960s, Levee returned to his more spontaneous abstract expressionist style, often using collage elements with loose brush work typical of lyrical abstraction.