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Place of Darkness

A dense grouping of figures, including an angel holding a guitar, a faceless knight, and an anguished figure with a red face, are shown against a blue background. The figures are all stretched, bent, and warped in style.

A dense grouping of figures, including an angel holding a guitar, a faceless knight, and an anguished figure with a red face, are shown against a blue background. The figures are all stretched, bent, and warped in style.

Artist Abraham Rattner (American, 1893–1978)
Title Place of Darkness
Date 1943
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions Image: 38 5/8 x 58 1/2 in. (98.1 x 148.6 cm)
Framed: 50 1/2 x 70 1/2 in. (128.3 x 179.1 cm)
Credit Line Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Henry R. Hope, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Accession Number 58.42

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About this Work

Rattner was a leading exponent of the figurative expressionist style that emerged in American art during the 1940s. This work’s dense composition and tormented figures evokes Picasso’s mural Guernica, which documents the murder of civilians in the Spanish Civil War. Rattner could have seen Guernica while living in Paris in the 1930s. Reports of the Holocaust began filtering into the United States in 1942. This painting is one of many that Rattner painted around the time to express his anguish over the news of the deportation and murder of European Jews. He called this painting’s subject “apocalyptic” and described its grotesque figures as sinners. The angel, however, offers a slight glimmer of hope.


Provenance research is ongoing for this and many other items in the Eskenazi Museum of Art permanent collection. For more information about the provenance of this artwork, please contact the department curator with specific questions.

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"Place of Darkness | Collections Online." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2024. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/browse/object.php?number=58.42