The Eternal City

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: The Museum of Modern Art, New York (the USA).

Briefly about the painting:

After receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship, Blume spent one year in Italy, and the Roman forum inspired him to do this work. The multidimensional surrealistic work reflects the attack of the civilization on fragile antiquity. The collective landscape with distant mountains, illuminated by the pink sun, is filled with the remains of elegant architecture and fragments of sculpture. The green head of the evil monster – the fascist dictator Mussolini – is contrasted with the sad figure of an old woman with a plastered leg. She sits among the piles of stones that were once a statue. Behind her, there is an altar on the whole wall. The workers digging the ground (its “womb” is bleeding) are, probably, obeying power and strength. The “Eternal City” does not look so indestructible, and the whole atmosphere is the forerunner of the rapidly approaching Second World War.