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Felix Nussbaum: Art Defamed, Art in Exile, Art in Resistance - A Biography

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Felix Nussbaum was a German, Jewish, artist, born in 1904 and murdered, with his wife, in one of the extermination camps in 1944. This book is as detailed a record as is possible to construct of his life and art as one of millions of people under death sentences from the time of Hitler's accession to power in 1933.
The personal story is touching and painful to read. The pictures run the gamut from charming, appealing, sensitive to powerful expressions of alienation, depression and fear in a life under constant threat.
While there is no artistic record of his brief life in the death camp, his experience as an internee in a French camp for unwanted emigres from various countries, gave him the raw material for classic images of the dehumanizing impact of such places. From the time he escaped from that brutality to the end of his life, a few years later, he produced iconic paintings which should fulfill his desire that these works would survive as a memorial to him and his fellow victims.
The pictures are intensively analyzed by learned art historian; the reproductions are excellent.