John Levee was an American abstract expressionist who studied at the California Institute of Art alongside Mark Rothko, Clifford Still, and Richard Diebenkorn, later continuing at the Académie Julian in Paris where he worked in Montparnasse and connected with Sam Francis. His early work drew inspiration from the New York School, including Kline, Motherwell, Pollock, and de Kooning. After experimenting with hard-edge geometric abstraction in the 1960s, he returned to a spontaneous, lyrical approach, often incorporating collage and gestural brushwork.
