Sculptor, painter, and printmaker Israel Levitan was born on June 13, 1912 in Lawrence, Massachusetts to Russian immigrants Hyman and Esther Levitan. He didn't pursue art until he was was an adult, having left home as a teenager to travel for several years throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, even living for a time with Blackfeet tribe in Montana. In 1934 he settled settled in Detroit where he began working as an auto mechanic, and soon became interested in boxing. He become a union-sponsored welterweight and fought in the State Amateur Boxing championships, using the pseudonym Jack Myers.

Retiring from what was ultimately a successful boxing career in 1939, he began taking painting classes first in Detroit and then, on a scholarship, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Unfortunately his studies were soon interrupted by the U.S. entry into World War II. He joined the effort as a medical corpsman for in the South Pacific. 

With the end of the war he relocated to New York, studying with Amedee Ozenfant and then with Hans Hoffman at the Art Students League, where he met his wife, painter and designer Idee. It would be Hoffmann who suggested that Levitan try his hand at sculpture, noting that his paintings and drawings exhibited strong dimensionality. Hoffman then found a mentor for Levitan, Ossip Zadkine, and Levitan traveled to Paris to study with him from 1950 to '51. 

Upon his return to New York he set up a studio on East 9th Street and joined the American Abstract Artists group, eventually serving as vice president. He began exhibiting regularly, and was featured at the Wayhe Gallery, the Artists' Gallery, Tenth Street Galleries, the Whitney, and more. He continued to work and exhibit throughout the U.S. and internationally for the next three decades, and taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and the MacDowell Art Colony in Pterborough, Hampshire.

The Levitans maintained a home in East Hampton until the early 1970s, when they moved to Largo, Florida. Levitan died there on May 17, 1982.