Hy's Vision

Hy is in awe of life on Earth. Inspired by the contrasting beauty and harshness of the natural world, he freezes a moment in time, and leaves it to you to imagine the story and interpret the message or the morality. His animals are powerful and graceful. In his paintings they are vivid and colorful. His bronze koala bear is cute and cuddly; his hawk is a premonition of doom. His giraffes water contentedly in a pond; under the watchful eye of its mother, his baby elephant is attacked by a desperately hungry hyena. He has sculpted a fight to the death between a grizzly bear and an African lion because he "wanted to know who would win." Although these two animals are unlikely to meet in nature, he knew the Romans brought African lions to Russia and let them fight bears for entertainment.

Hy's art peaks with his studies of the paradox of mankind. His symphony orchestras remind us of all the good of which humanity is capable. His female nude and his athletic figures celebrate the beauty of the human form. Yet his bronze tribute to the Holocaust is so shocking it can hardly be viewed for long, but then again it wasn't intended to fit your decorating scheme. It was an expression of Hy's non-verbal philosophy which questions how people can be at once so beautiful yet so cruel.

Hy's panorama of the Grand Canyon accentuates what a speck of dust we are in the universe. His stormy painting of a sinking tanker spilling oil expresses his frustration for what a capacity we "specks" have to drastically alter our environment. His paintings side by side of a majestic bull elephant, and an elephant carcass with the proud husband, wife and child posing by their "kill," tell of his profound sadness at the destruction of the natural world.

Expressions from the heart and soul of a human being who truly cares for all living things, upon whom the God-given talent to convey such expression in art has been bestowed, are what Hy Levens wanted you to see, enjoy, own and display with pride.