The Human Figure and Jewish Culture

In this abundantly illustrated study, Eliane Strosberg investigates why somany modern artists of Jewish descent continued to paint the human formeven as the avant-garde movement vigorously promoted abstraction. Strosbergoffers a lively analysis of the work of a wide range of Jewish artists,including the immigrant painters of the École de Paris, like Soutine andModigliani; the American social realists, like Ben Shahn and Raphael Soyer;and the masters of the postwar School of London, such as Lucian Freud andR. B. Kitaj. She concludes that even though their styles were diverse, all theseartists were drawn to the human figure because it offered them a means ofcommunicating, in secular terms, aspects of their Jewish intellectual heritage,such as their humanistic values and passion for social justice.