Life lessons

As a master of realism, Jerome Witkin illustrates in his art the moral plight of everyday lives. His most complex and critically acclaimed works - intense, often disturbing scenes of the Holocaust - have earned him a growing international audience. Through the "virtues of descriptive vividness and accuracy," as Kenneth Baker writes in his Foreword, Sherry Chayat elucidates Witkin's success in almost single-handedly returning to the realm of painting those subjects that are powerfully universal as well as intensely personal. Witkin believes that this is his domain as a painter, as it was for artists like Goya and Eakins. Mortal Sin: In the Confession of J. Robert Oppenheimer; Death as an Usher: Berlin, 1933; Subway: A Marriage; The Screams of Kitty Genovese - Witkin's huge and often multipaneled canvases deal with human dilemmas and current societal issues, such as the homeless, AIDS, and drugs. His art demonstrates that we bear a moral responsibility for the pain suffered by others. "I'm not just a painter," Witkin states. "I'm a person looking at my century. We must get back to someplace where we can feel again, where we have value, a sense of the future."