Abstract

The life and work of the Brazilian Jewish artist Frans Krajcberg (b. 1921, Kozienice, Poland) is an interdisciplinary case study establishing a unique analogy between global humanitarian and environmental crises. The artist/refugee's traumatic backstory informs his singular sensibility that embraces the aesthetic of the momentary in multidimensional works of art - sculptures, reliefs, paintings, prints, mixed media, and photographs. Krajcberg is recognized for his dual perspective of camaraderie and distance from post World War II artists, in particular, those associated with Abstract Expressionism in the United States and New Realists/Nouveaux Realists in France. The artist's prescient outcry creates visual equivalences between the riveting images of destruction/rejuvenation seen in in the deforestation/new growth of the Amazon rainforest and those from the Holocaust in Europe during World War II.