TitleMurdered, Vietnam
Artist
Chaim Koppelman
(1920 - 2009)
Date1966
MediumEmbossment, collage and soft-ground etching
DimensionsSheet size: 19 3/4 x 27 3/4 in.
Framed: 21 3/4 x 30 x 1 3/8 in.
Edition2/30
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, Gift of Dorothy Koppelman, 2011
Object number2011.6
Label TextNew York native Chaim Koppelman studied printmaking at the Art Students League, Brooklyn College, and became an important part of the printmaking world, especially in New York City. Koppelman served as a soldier in Europe during World War II and the art that he saw in London during that time, in particular surrealism and the biomorphic forms of Henry Moore, had a great effect on him. His multi-figure compositions from the 1950s address many of the common existential questions that were posed by artists after the war. By the 1960s, some of Koppelman's work took a political stance against the Vietnam War."Murdered, Vietnam" takes a vociferous political stance against the war and is communicated through the repeated forms of the mid-1960s aesthetic. At the center of the composition an image of President Lyndon Johnson is surrounded by repeated forms of embossed babies, representing the innocent deaths suffered during the war. The artist wrote: "I want this print to quietly disturb you about our evil doings in Vietnam, where people, including babies, are being needlessly killed. The babies are meant to stand for all new life in Vietnam and elsewhere."
