Few artists have captured Australian history as convincingly as Sidney Nolan (1917–92); his most iconic old works were synonymous with Australian modernism. Nolan was known as an artist who celebrated the human spirit, so this story was previously unknown. Many thanks to Andrew Turley.
By 1939, in Melbourne, Nolan first painted the darkness of concentration camps with deep feeling. Prison Camp was brushed over a newspaper photograph of Buchenwald Germany inmates wearing striped uniforms. In 1944 he painted Lublin, the Polish city that before WW2 had been an important centre of Jewish culture. It featured two buildings pierced by square windows, each window trapped a single distraught face below a row of chimneys (crematoria).
The Nazis had established a ghetto within Lublin’s city limits to house “relocated” Jewish and Polish families. Overcrowding, disease and starvation sapped their strength as they waited to be shot in the forest, or packed into the gas chambers of Majdanek, Belzec or Sobibor. By late in WW2, Lublin's Jewish population had been eradicated.
By June 1955 Nolan was living in London, where he saved disturbing newspaper articles revealing new horrors of the Holocaust. But it was the capture of one of the Holocaust’s most notorious German officers, Adolf Eichmann, that created the catalyst for Nolan’s journey to Auschwitz. Eichmann had disappeared after the war and had been tracked to Argentina where, in May 1960, he was caught by the Israeli Intelligence service, Mossad. He was smuggled back to Israel, charged with crimes against humanity and in Apr 1961, went on trial in Jerusalem.
At the Eichmann trial, The Observer had asked Al Alvarez to write about the concentration camps in Poland. Alvarez talked about it with Nolan, and agreed that if Nolan could paint the camps, it would be a duty to do so. Nolan agreed!
The camps already haunted Nolan, so he made notes on how he'd paint them. In Nov-Dec, in the weeks before Eichmann’s judges passed sentence, Nolan repeatedly filled sheets of paper with the one notorious prisoner. Some were simple outlines, others fully formed, but every image had a broad forehead, receding hair, thick glasses and thin lips.
In Dec 1961 Eichmann was found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people, against humanity and of war crimes. Nolan was reluctant to dig deeper into Europe but when Eichmann was sentenced to death, it provided the release Nolan needed. He then switched from Eichmann’s face to painting 100+ images of concentration camp inmates, keeping them with the Eichmann portraits in his Judges and Victims folder. The first group was characterised by prison stripes. The second group were wreathed in smoke, which suddenly cleared to expose harsh heads with screaming mouths. The third group were skeletal heads, tortured and twisted. His iconography was clear; with an economy of strokes, Nolan’s pictures displayed nothing to redeem the human race.
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Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Judges and Victims), c1961
Eichmann Trial, 64 x 52 cm
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artnet
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Sidney Nolan, Untitled (Concentration Camp), c1961
Dead bodies on a cart, waiting to be thrown out.
Sidney Nolan Trust
In Jan 1962, Alvarez knew Auschwitz was a difficult experience to handle, even as a visitor. Nolan saw piles of human hair, suitcases, spectacles, shaving brushes, artificial limbs. Great mounds of old shoes reach up like rubble, all of it covered in dust and human ash. In his autobiography, Alvarez remembered that Nolan was upset by these horrific relics. AND also by the orderliness of the camp’s layout. The interiors of the barracks were horror-filled, especially the tiers of bunks in which the prisoners slept, six men to a bunk, waiting to be slayed.
Overwhelmed, Nolan refused to illustrate The Observer article. It was an emotional experience that triggered an unexpected retreat from any direct Auschwitz imagery. Alvarez added to Nolan’s emotional turmoil in 1962 by sending a draft of his article, suggesting that in modern times all humanity had the capability to be inhuman. If the camps were simply the playgrounds for sadists who, in another society would have been locked away, then they were an aberration best forgotten.
From Sept 1962, Nolan chased visions of paradise in a 3-month trip in Africa. But a deep well of grief ran through the resulting work. There were faces & figures of tragic tribes and races, subjugated by colonial empires. In 1965, Nolan briefly placed apes and saints on smoking crosses while helmeted Nazis marched beneath or leered at women. Psychologically unable to translate the experience into paint, Nolan continued to stare into the pit and avoided speaking of the Holocaust for 20+ years.
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Sidney Nolan, Auschwitz, 1965
By 1939, in Melbourne, Nolan first painted the darkness of concentration camps with deep feeling. Prison Camp was brushed over a newspaper photograph of Buchenwald Germany inmates wearing striped uniforms. In 1944 he painted Lublin, the Polish city that before WW2 had been an important centre of Jewish culture. It featured two buildings pierced by square windows, each window trapped a single distraught face below a row of chimneys (crematoria).
The Nazis had established a ghetto within Lublin’s city limits to house “relocated” Jewish and Polish families. Overcrowding, disease and starvation sapped their strength as they waited to be shot in the forest, or packed into the gas chambers of Majdanek, Belzec or Sobibor. By late in WW2, Lublin's Jewish population had been eradicated.
By June 1955 Nolan was living in London, where he saved disturbing newspaper articles revealing new horrors of the Holocaust. But it was the capture of one of the Holocaust’s most notorious German officers, Adolf Eichmann, that created the catalyst for Nolan’s journey to Auschwitz. Eichmann had disappeared after the war and had been tracked to Argentina where, in May 1960, he was caught by the Israeli Intelligence service, Mossad. He was smuggled back to Israel, charged with crimes against humanity and in Apr 1961, went on trial in Jerusalem.
At the Eichmann trial, The Observer had asked Al Alvarez to write about the concentration camps in Poland. Alvarez talked about it with Nolan, and agreed that if Nolan could paint the camps, it would be a duty to do so. Nolan agreed!
The camps already haunted Nolan, so he made notes on how he'd paint them. In Nov-Dec, in the weeks before Eichmann’s judges passed sentence, Nolan repeatedly filled sheets of paper with the one notorious prisoner. Some were simple outlines, others fully formed, but every image had a broad forehead, receding hair, thick glasses and thin lips.
In Dec 1961 Eichmann was found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people, against humanity and of war crimes. Nolan was reluctant to dig deeper into Europe but when Eichmann was sentenced to death, it provided the release Nolan needed. He then switched from Eichmann’s face to painting 100+ images of concentration camp inmates, keeping them with the Eichmann portraits in his Judges and Victims folder. The first group was characterised by prison stripes. The second group were wreathed in smoke, which suddenly cleared to expose harsh heads with screaming mouths. The third group were skeletal heads, tortured and twisted. His iconography was clear; with an economy of strokes, Nolan’s pictures displayed nothing to redeem the human race.
Eichmann Trial, 64 x 52 cm
Sidney Nolan Trust
Sidney Nolan,Himmelfarb concentration camp, 1961
62 x 49 cm.artnet
Dead bodies on a cart, waiting to be thrown out.
Sidney Nolan Trust
In Jan 1962, Alvarez knew Auschwitz was a difficult experience to handle, even as a visitor. Nolan saw piles of human hair, suitcases, spectacles, shaving brushes, artificial limbs. Great mounds of old shoes reach up like rubble, all of it covered in dust and human ash. In his autobiography, Alvarez remembered that Nolan was upset by these horrific relics. AND also by the orderliness of the camp’s layout. The interiors of the barracks were horror-filled, especially the tiers of bunks in which the prisoners slept, six men to a bunk, waiting to be slayed.
Overwhelmed, Nolan refused to illustrate The Observer article. It was an emotional experience that triggered an unexpected retreat from any direct Auschwitz imagery. Alvarez added to Nolan’s emotional turmoil in 1962 by sending a draft of his article, suggesting that in modern times all humanity had the capability to be inhuman. If the camps were simply the playgrounds for sadists who, in another society would have been locked away, then they were an aberration best forgotten.
From Sept 1962, Nolan chased visions of paradise in a 3-month trip in Africa. But a deep well of grief ran through the resulting work. There were faces & figures of tragic tribes and races, subjugated by colonial empires. In 1965, Nolan briefly placed apes and saints on smoking crosses while helmeted Nazis marched beneath or leered at women. Psychologically unable to translate the experience into paint, Nolan continued to stare into the pit and avoided speaking of the Holocaust for 20+ years.
63 x 52 cm
aCOMMENT
aCOMMENT
This powerful 1965 image was from a series he painted years after visiting Auschwitz. Two camp labourers lowered a naked body from the cross which held religious icons, one including the Christ child. The cross doubled as a chimney and the smoke belched out.
A few years ago Andrew Turley uncovered, in the Nolan archives, a haunting series of works relating to his journey to Auschwitz in 1961; this year, 2021, marked the 50th anniversary. To mark the event, the Sydney Nolan Trust exhibited the Auschwitz artwork that Nolan had created. And the anniversary of Eichmann’s trial is a good time to re-examine Nolan’s warning. Look back to the crematoria and barbed wire, and along with Nolan's exploration of our lesser nature, acknowledge and honour the millions of ghosts.
A few years ago Andrew Turley uncovered, in the Nolan archives, a haunting series of works relating to his journey to Auschwitz in 1961; this year, 2021, marked the 50th anniversary. To mark the event, the Sydney Nolan Trust exhibited the Auschwitz artwork that Nolan had created. And the anniversary of Eichmann’s trial is a good time to re-examine Nolan’s warning. Look back to the crematoria and barbed wire, and along with Nolan's exploration of our lesser nature, acknowledge and honour the millions of ghosts.