Portrait of Primo Levi Painting

Inspired by the life and writings of Primo Levi, the Italian holocaust surviver, chemist, writer, and important figure in Italian contemporary culture. Here I have tightened my loose verismo style a bit to carefully render his face, especially the eyes which have seen things no human should ever have to see. Levi was a guerrilla resistance fighter in the northern mountains of Italy during WWII. He was captured and sent to various concentration camps. Wikipedia: He was the author of several books, novels, collections of short stories, essays, and poems. His best-known works include If This Is a Man (1947, published as Survival in Auschwitz in the United States), his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland; and The Periodic Table (1975), linked to qualities of the elements, which the Royal Institution of Great Britain named the best science book ever written.