9. ‘The Great Disaster’ (1939) by Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944)


 

Yad Vashem Art Collection, Indian ink and wash on paper

A German-Jewish surrealist painter born in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, NW Germany, Nussbaum gives us in his artwork a glimpse into the mind of one individual among the victims of the Holocaust. He was murdered at Auschwitz. By 1944 his entire family had been wiped out.

‘The Great Disaster’, like Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ completed a few years earlier, stands as a protest at the horror and cruelty of war as it affects a civilian population.

‘When I perish, do not allow my pictures to die with me,’ he wrote. ‘Show them to people.’

‘The demise of Europe plays itself out against a backdrop of destroyed buildings. Both a full moon and the sun are visible in the somber, overcast sky. A group of figures appear in the center of the work, among them a woman crouching on the ground next to a standing figure with hands raised to the sky. The bodies of other victims are scattered throughout the scene. In the left foreground, two figures face forward; one covers her mouth with her hand, the other raises a hand to her forehead. The painting, done only in black, white and shades of gray, expresses Nussbaum’s sense of foreboding that the outbreak of war signals the destruction of European culture.’

Copyright © 2022 Yad Vashem. The World Holocaust Remembrance Center

You can read more about Felix Nussbaum at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Nussbaum

 

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