Torso I
| Artist | Leon Golub (American, 1922–2004) |
|---|---|
| Title | Torso I |
| Date | Ca. 1961 |
| Medium | Oil and lacquer on canvas |
| Dimensions | Overall: 49 5/16 x 30 in. (125.3 x 76.2 cm) Framed: 50 1/2 × 30 13/16 × 1 7/8 in. (128.3 × 78.3 × 4.8 cm) |
| Credit Line | BKN Fund-Kenneth Newberger, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University |
| Accession Number | 70.27 |
| This artwork is currently off display. You may be able to see this artwork by filling out an art viewing room request. | |
After teaching from 1957–1959 at Indiana University, the Chicago-born Golub spent several years in Paris, where he likely painted Torso I. Golub’s distinctive paintings critique the violence and abuses of political power that defined the twentieth century. By adding and then scraping away layers of paint to create distressed surfaces, Golub used the artistic process itself to explore the violence that humans perpetrate against each other. This work is one of a series depicting brutalized male figures with skin that appears to have been burned. This series likely references the burning of human bodies in the Nazis’ death camps, in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and during the Vietnam War, which he vocally opposed.
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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"Torso I | Collections Online." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2025. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/browse/object.php?number=70.27