David Levine was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1926. He studied at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School, Pratt Institute, the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, and the Eighth Street School of New York with Hans Hoffman.

Known by many as one of the greatest caricaturists of the late 20th Century, Levine is also celebrated for his figurative watercolors, portraits, cityscapes and landscapes and particularly his scenes feautring the piers of Coney Island in New York.

In addition to numerous one-person exhibitions, Levine's work has been shown in Paris, Stuttgart, Washington, D.C., Munich, Oxford, and Beverly Hills. His many awards include the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, the Isaac Maynard, Julius Hallgarten, and Thomas B. Clarke awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Childe Hassam Purchase Prize, and the Gold Medal of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Levine also received the French Legion of Honor award and the THomas Nast Award in Landau, Germany.

Levine's work is represented in teh collections of many renowned museums such as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Newark Museum, the Library of Congress, the National Portrait Gallery, the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

There have been six books published of the artist's work, including The Arts of David Levine (Knopf, New York, 1978) and Pens and Needles (Gambit, Boston, 1969). 

David Levine died in December of 2009.