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A revelatory look at midcentury American artistic responses to the Holocaust, and the role of the Jewish experience in the development of modern art The profound effects of the Holocaust and the Jewish experience of World War II left an indelible mark on artists of the time. This insightful book delves into the impact of these events on American art and seeks answers to the questions that confronted artists as the mass deportation and murder of Europe’s Jews came to light. Through paintings, sculpture, photography, drawings, prints, and designs for memorials by Louise Nevelson, Mark Rothko, Ben Shahn, Frank Stella, and many others, this volume highlights the intersection of Jewish experience and modern art, a subject that has been largely neglected in art historical studies.
Jennifer McComas draws on the Jewish theological concepts of destruction, exile, memory, and repair to trace artistic responses and show how they helped define a transformative era of American art. Essays also explore how Jewish Americans memorialized the victims in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and how artists in the final decades of the twentieth century continued to confront its legacy. A timeline of events pertaining to World War II and Jewish communal life in the United States provides additional context for the choices made by artists as they addressed an unprecedented catastrophe in their work.
Published in association with the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Exhibition Schedule: Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University (September 4–December 15, 2025)
About the author
Jennifer McComas is curator of European and American art at the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University and author of
Swing Landscape: Stuart Davis and the Modernist Mural.
Samantha Baskind is distinguished professor of art history at Cleveland State University.
Hasia R. Diner is professor emerita in the Department of History and the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, and director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History.
