Lecture
The Baker Museum Exhibition Lecture
Mauricio Lasansky’s “Nazi Drawings” in Context: Grappling with the Holocaust Before and After Eichmann’s Trial in Jerusalem
Rachel McGarry, Ph.D., Elizabeth MacMillan Chair of European Art and Curator of European Paintings and Works on Paper at the Minneapolis Institute of Art
Argentine-American artist Mauricio Lasansky (1914-2012) executed his formidable “Nazi Drawings” series in the 1960s, just as the world was beginning to grapple with the atrocities of the Holocaust. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the Nazis’ attempted genocide of the Jewish people of Europe was absorbed in the carnage of war. Survivors bore witness to a deafening silence in the 1940s and ’50s. This changed in 1961, following the trial of the notorious Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Eichmann’s trial was the first to be televised across the globe. Ninety survivors testified, and their harrowing, heartbreaking stories illuminated the terrifying reach of the Third Reich and helped to humanize the millions of nameless victims. Following this watershed event, the Shoah was seen, felt, documented, studied and memorialized around the world. Art, literature, film, theater and television each played a vital role in shining a light on the tragedy. Lasansky’s “Nazi Drawings” were part of this effort.
This presentation is part of the exhibition Envisioning Evil: “The Nazi Drawings” by Mauricio Lasansky.