Maya Cohen Levy

Born in Tel Aviv, 1955
Lives and works in Tel Aviv

Maya Cohen Levy studied, like her mother, at the School of Painting towards the end of Margoshelsky's tenure as a teacher, and later taught painting there for many years. She presents portraits painted by her mother alongside works from her series Eye Witness. Her mother is her point of departure as an artist. She sees her as expressing the power of life and creation during the Holocaust and during times of illness. In this sense, her story resonates with those of Charlotte Solomon and Frida Kahlo.


Renata Braun - Rina Levy

1931, Lvov, Poland
1969, Tel Aviv

Rina Levy (Maya Cohen Levy's mother) was born in Lvov, Poland, as Renata Braun, the only child in a family of doctors. She spent part of the war years with her mother at the Lvov Ghetto. She was hidden alone in a cellar for two additional years by a family who was paid to save her, and remained there until the end of the war. She spent another year living under Soviet rule. All contact with her family was lost.
During the long hours she spent in the cellar, Renata assuaged her fear of being caught, and found solace from her life of solitude and dread, by entering the realm of the imagination - reading intensively and drawing. She based her drawings on photographs of her mother that remained in her possession, on illustrations of beloved stories, and on Pan Tadeusz, the well-known epic poem by Adam Mickiewicz. She also wrote down the notes for musical pieces she remembered by heart on the back of her drawings.
When she immigrated to Israel, her name was changed to Rina. She joined the communist party and began studying painting at the Avni Institute, and later at the School of Painting under the direction of Arie Margoshelsky. She worked as a kindergarten teacher, married, and had three children. Even in her last years, when she was sick and bedridden, she continued painting - lying down, while her husband held the canvas for her. She died of a terminal illness when she was 38.