Rudolf Levy was a renowned painter who worked with and was a student of Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

. According to historian Cecil Roth

Cecil Roth

Cecil Roth , was a British Jewish historian.He was educated at Merton College, Oxford and returned to Oxford as reader in Jewish Studies from 1939 to 1964...

, Levy was one of the "pioneers of the modern art

Modern art

Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...

 movement in Germany."

Rudolf Levy was born in Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin

Szczecin

Szczecin , is the capital city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland. It is the country's seventh-largest city and the largest seaport in Poland on the Baltic Sea. As of June 2009 the population was 406,427....

, Poland) in 1875. He fought for the German Army in World War I and was awarded the Iron Cross

Iron Cross

The Iron Cross is a cross symbol typically in black with a white or silver outline that originated after 1219 when the Kingdom of Jerusalem granted the Teutonic Order the right to combine the Teutonic Black Cross placed above a silver Cross of Jerusalem....

. In 1933, Levy fled from Berlin to Paris and in 1940 escaped to Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

, Italy. In 1943 he was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp

Auschwitz concentration camp

Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...

, where he died in 1944.