Si Lewen's Parade: An Artist's Odyssey

This deeply moving version of The Parade allows the reader to explore the art as Si Lewen intended it to be seen, in sequence. As the work unfolds, the reader is taken on an unforgettable journey through the essential nature of all wars—past, present, and future. Remastered from the original art, The Parade was and remains a groundbreaking work, a cry from the heart about mankind’s perpetual lust for war and its ensuing horrors by a Polish Jewish painter born right after World War I who experienced those horrors as one of the first American soldiers to enter the gates of Buchenwald in 1945. This edition was newly discovered, remastered, and presented by Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Maus. In addition to Lewen's spectacular art, the book features An Artist’s Odyssey, a monograph edited, designed, and with an extensive biographical and critical essay by Spiegelman, who takes the reader on a guided tour of Si Lewen’s singular life and work, profusely illustrated with art from Lewen's long and prolific career. Lewen turned away from his success as a postwar New York painter to immerse himself in his art rather than in the “artworld”—exploring his early childhood vision of wanting to see paintings hung close together, “so they could talk to one another,” a vision well ahead of its time that is appropriately presented in the unique format of this book.