Zimiles’s portfolio Holocaust shows the horrors of the genocide carried out by the Nazis against Jewish people and other minorities between 1941 and 1945. In #6: Roundup at Zamosc (dis-played in the case), Zimiles draws on artistic precedents in his depiction of violence and death. The rearing horse, the fallen man at left, and the contorted expressions of the figures echo the composition of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, a monumental black and white painting that testifies to the devastation of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. The prints’ color palette only strengthens this allusion, while also under-scoring the somber gravity of the events portrayed.
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An experienced printmaker, Zimiles mimics the techniques of traditional stone lithography and adapts them to the offset process. By brushing ink onto transparent sheets of Mylar, he reproduces the distinctive washy effect of lithographic tusche (a greasy pigmented liquid). This gives the images a patchy and distorted quality, as if such tragedies cannot be faced head on, or like a memory that has already gone fuzzy around the edges—emphasizing the need to remember.
