From the mahJ to The Met

In 2021–2022, the mahJ presented for the first time the drawings of the graphic series The Parade, created in 1950 by Si Lewen (1918–2016). This exhibition rediscovered an artist little known in Europe, who had nevertheless left his mark on the American art scene in the post-war period, with a work combining drawings, paintings and collages.

Fifty-five of the sixty-three drawings in The Parade have entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) collections in New York, where a complete presentation is planned. This striking black-and-white sequel is both a realistic and allegorical account of the rise of Nazism, war, the Holocaust and the reconciliation of peoples. Published in 1957 as a book with very few copies printed, Parade became a rare work until its republication in 2016 under the direction of Art Spiegelman, author of Maus, an admirer of Si Lewen's graphic and narrative talents. In France, it is available at Flammarion.