This pile of human remains might initially strike viewers as repulsive and shocking. For the artist Hyman Bloom, who spent a great deal of time in anatomy theaters and hospital morgues, many motivations were at play in his depictions of this subject. Seeing the body inside and out was awe-inspiring, and humbling: My concern, he explained, was the complexity and color beauty of the internal works, the wonder, and the feeling of transgressing boundaries which such curiosity evokes. Intensely spiritual, and proud of his Jewish heritage, Bloom made these harrowing images in the wake of World War II (1939-45) and the Holocaust (the Nazi-led genocide of over six million Jews) when the meaning of the body and its relationship to spirit and morality was of great concern of artists and writers.
