Si Lewen, The Parade

Si Lewen was born in Lublin, Poland. His family fled the pogroms in the early 1920s and he spent his childhood in Germany, where he witnessed the rise of National Socialism. In 1935, after a brief stay in France, he and his family emigrated to New York. He enlisted in the American army in 1942, joined the Military Intelligence Service, and discovered the Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after its liberation in 1945.

This experience was one of the sources of The Parade, the striking series of sixty-three both realist and allegorical black and white drawings narrating the rise of Nazism, the war, the Holocaust and the reconciliation of peoples.

Albert Einstein wrote to Si Lewen in 1951: “I find your work The Parade very impressive from a purely artistic standpoint. Furthermore, I find it a real merit to counteract the tendencies towards war through the medium of art. Nothing can equal the psychological effect of real art — neither factual descriptions nor intellectual discussion. It has often been said that art should not be used to serve any political or otherwise practical goals. But I could never agree with this point of view.”

Published in a limited edition in 1957, The Parade became a very rare work until the new edition in 2016 edited by Art Spiegelman, author of the graphic novel Maus and admirer of Si Lewen’s graphic and narrative talents.

In conjunction with the exhibition, The Parade is being published for the first time in French by Flammarion on 3 November 2021, augmented by An Artist’s Odyssey, a biography and contribution by Art Spiegelman. On 10 November, Art Spiegelman will be present at the mahJ for a “big discussion”, with a film show, guided visits and an etching workshop programmed around the exhibition (in French).

Curator:
Pascale Samuel, curator of the mahJ’s modern and contemporary collection, with Virginie Michel, mahJ