Lorena Levi, a British artist known for her narrative portraits painted on wood, died on January 8 at age 29 after battling pancreatic cancer. Her death was announced via Instagram. Levi gained rapid momentum in the UK art scene over the past few years, staging a show in Milan with M+B gallery, participating in the V.O. Curations program, and being added to Marlborough Gallery's roster shortly before it closed in 2023. Her work is held in the British government's national collection. She was born in Istanbul in 1997, raised in Tel Aviv and the UK, and studied at Art & Guilds in London and Edinburgh College of Art.
Levi's death at such a young age marks the loss of a rising talent whose work explored embodiment, illness, and the male gaze through a distinctive style of painting directly onto raw wood. Her openness about living with cystic fibrosis and pancreatic cancer, and her use of art to process those experiences, made her a poignant figure in contemporary portraiture. Her final self-portrait, executed during chemotherapy, underscores the personal stakes of her practice and the urgency of her brief career.