The Jewish Encyclopedia
of Western Pennsylvania
A project of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center
Martha Levy appears to have been born in Western Pennsylvania. She attended religious school at Rodef Shalom Congregation as a child. She studied at the Irene Kaufmann Settlement House Neighborhood Art School and graduated from Schenley High School before attending the Department of Painting and Design at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, where she was assistant art editor for the Thistle yearbook in 1921 and 1922. She exhibited locally in the late 1920s, showing work in the 1927 and 1929 annual exhibitions of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh.
After her training in Pittsburgh, Levy studied in Europe, including stops in Paris and Florence. She also studied at the Art Student’s League in New York from 1926 to 1932 and attended its summer school in Woodstock, New York. She appears to have later relocated to Woodstock. She worked for the Public Works of Art Project in 1933 and 1934. The Smithsonian American Art Museum holds two of her paintings from his era, transferred from the U.S. Department of Labor in the 1960s. She later worked for the Federal Art Project, producing a three-panel mural “Men Working in Slate Quarry” in 1939 for the study hall of Granville High School (New York). Records of her exhibitions and commissions continue into the mid-1940s.