Carlo Levi as an iconoclast Painter
Levi’s biography as a painter is illustrated from the point of view of the pictorial
poetics expressed in Paura della pittura (1942). In this essay the relationship
between freedom, fear and painting is investigated in dispute with avant-garde
movements of the XX century, that Levi himself considered as mere mirror of
idolatrous times. Such interpretation is based on some typical aspects of Jewish
culture: individualism and iconoclasm. This leads to identify several «periods» in
Levi’s wide pictorial production, each characterized by discontinuity and persistence:
an early period in Turin, a «Parisian period», a «political confinement period
» and a «post- second war social realistic period».