Collection of the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Nightmare

Artist/Maker Isaac Frankel (United States (b. Germany), 1904-1989)

Date1986

Mediumacrylic on cotton

DimensionsSight: 20 1/2 x 27 3/4 in. (52.1 x 70.5 cm)
Framed: 21 3/4 x 29 x 1 3/4 in. (55.2 x 73.7 x 4.4 cm)

ClassificationsVisual Works

Credit LineGift of Dorlene Shane

Terms

Object number86.0197

DescriptionIsaac Frankel was a self-taught artist whose sole purpose in life during the last four years before his death was to paint the horrors of the Holocaust as he remembered them. Although he had not painted since he was a young man in Berlin, realizing the end of his life was near, he began to paint again. Of his art Frankel said, “I want to show the Holocaust and I want to show how it was. On the other hand, I want it to be art. But they collide. It is not easy to combine both.” Frankel, whose wife and two children died in Treblinka concentration camp, had been taken by train to Buchenwald. He was one of the “lucky” survivors, spared the notorious death camp, Auschwitz, which became the destination for half of the train’s passengers. In "Nightmare," however, the artist has chosen to recreate the horrors of Auschwitz, where so many of his companions met death.

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