Art. The death of his father in 1939 prompted a series of paintings of Jewish sages. From 1942-45, Levine served in the United States Army during World War II. Upon his discharge from service he painted Welcome Home (1946), a lampoon of the arrogance of military power. In 1959, the painting would engender political controversy when it was included in the American National Exhibition in Moscow, raising suspicions in the House Un-American Activities Committee of pro-Communist sympathies. President Dwight D. Eisenhower called the painting "more lampoon than art." Levine was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1945. With a Fulbright grant he traveled to Europe in 1951, and was affected by the work of the Old Masters, particularly the Mannerism of El Greco, which inspired him to distort and exaggerate the forms of his figures for expressive purposes. After returning to the United States, Levine continued to paint biblical subjects, and also produced Gangster Funeral, a narrative which Levine referred to as a "comedy". Further commentary on American life was furnished by Election Night (1954), Inauguration (1958), and Thirty- Five Minutes from Times Square (1956). Also in the late 1950s, Levine painted a series of sensitive portraits of his wife and daughter. In the 1960s, he responded not only to social unrest in the United States with works such as Birmingham '63 (1963), but to international subjects as well, as in The Spanish Prison (1959–1962), Panethnikon (1978), and The Arms Brokers (1982–83). Levine once said of himself, "I am primarily concerned with the condition of man." Following his own direction, he created a distinct body of socially conscious art that probes the strengths and weaknesses of humanity. In 1979 Levine was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1982. Following the death of his wife in the 1982, he developed an increased interest in Hebraism, and with it a proliferation of paintings with themes from the Hebrew Bible. Exhibitions and collections Levine's work is featured in many public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Brooklyn Museum, the Phillips Collection, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Fogg Art Museum, and the National Gallery of Art. In 1973 the Vatican purchased Cain and Abel (1961),