Kathe Tanous Levenson, BHS 1960?

Kathe Tanous Levenson, Caricaturist BHS 1960

The East Hampton Star, September 27, 2010

Kathe Tanous Levenson, a painter, writer, and cartoonist perhaps best known in East Hampton for her more than 100 caricatures of well-known people on display at Della Femina restaurant in East Hampton, died on Friday at Southampton Hospital. Her husband of nearly 35 years, Bob Levenson, was beside her, "holding her toes."

She was 67 and had had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for the last few years. They lived on Lily Hill Lane in East Hampton.

Friends remembered Ms. Levenson as a talented artist with a big personality, whose sharp sense of humor was often reflected in her work.

"You always knew when she was in the room. She was beyond loud, she was raucous," her husband, Bob Levenson, said this week. "She brought light into every room just by being in it."
Ms. Levenson’s work was shown at the Elaine Benson Gallery, the Arlene Bujese Gallery, and the Wally Findlay Galleries, among others. A number of her oils and acrylics are displayed at Home Sweet Home Moving and Storage in East Hampton. Donna Freeman, whose family owns the business, said that "customers came in, especially in the dead of wintertime," and marveled at the hydrangeas, ocean, and clouds, that were the subjects of her works, "and just magical."
When Jerry Della Femina asked Ms. Levenson to do caricatures for his restaurant, "she went and visited every one of those people . . . and she got to know quite a few luminaries," Mr. Levenson said.

The couple were married on Dec. 31, 1975, "so I wouldn’t forget the date," he said, after having met while working together in California for Doyle, Dane and Bernbach, the advertising agency, where she was an art director.

She was born Oct. 6, 1942, to Henry J. and Helen Smith Tanous in Burbank, Calif., where she grew up and went to high school. She graduated from the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, which later became the California Institute of the Arts, and married a man from Saudi Arabia shortly thereafter. That marriage ended, and she returned to California.

"Like many people on the West Coast, they like to come to New York," Mr. Levenson said. In the 1970s, he "brought her to New York and ultimately gave her a job working as an art director," again at Doyle, Dane and Bernbach.

Also like many people from California, he said, she wasn’t particularly enamored with Manhattan. Without consulting him, she came back from a weekend visiting friends in East Hampton and announced she had rented a house on McGuirk Street in the village.
In 1983, Ms. Levenson published a children’s book called "When I Grow Up and You Grow Down," and for a time, her cartoons ran in The Southampton Press.

"She loved the things that all artists like about the area — light, and mostly the people that were here, not all artists, but local folks," her husband said. "She would just go and sit and make sure the ocean was still there, once a day anyhow. And got her two cents into a lot of things," he said, including the East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society.

For many years, the couple had a house on Useppa Island in southwest Florida. A memorial service is planned there at a later date. In East Hampton, friends and family will be invited to a celebration on Oct. 6, which was her birthday. She was cremated and her ashes will be spread here and in Florida.

Two stepsons, Keith Levenson of Westchester and Seth Levenson of Park City, Utah, survive, as do a brother and sister, Ron Tanous of Burbank and Dorothy Tanous, who lives in India.