Jack Levine (January 3, 1915 – November 8, 2010) was an American Social Realist painter and printmaker best known for his satires on modern life, political corruption, and biblical narratives.

[2] He grew up in the South End of Boston, where he observed a street life composed of European immigrants and a prevalence of poverty and societal ills, subjects which would inform his work.

[10] In 1937, his The Feast of Pure Reason, a satire of Boston political power, was placed on loan to the Museum of Modern Art.

[15] In 1959, the painting would engender political controversy when it was included in the American National Exhibition in Moscow, raising suspicions in the House Un-American Activities Committee of pro-Communist sympathies.

[18] With a Fulbright grant he traveled to Europe in 1951, and was affected by the work of the Old Masters, particularly the Mannerism of El Greco,[3][19] which inspired him to distort and exaggerate the forms of his figures for expressive purposes.

[20] Further commentary on American life was furnished by Election Night (1954), Inauguration (1958), and Thirty- Five Minutes from Times Square (1956).

In the 1960s, he responded not only to social unrest in the United States with works such as Birmingham '63 (1963), but to international subjects as well, as in The Spanish Prison (1959–1962), Panethnikon (1978), and The Arms Brokers (1982–83).

Following his own direction, he created a distinct body of socially conscious art that probes the strengths and weaknesses of humanity.