Julius Bloch

Julius Thiengen Bloch was born in Germany at Kehl. As a young Jewish boy, he moved to the US, where he studied in Philadelphia. In 1912 he returned to Europe for the first time and did his military service there. Bloch then taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia for some time. He also became well-known during the Great Depression through his lithographs, combining social realism with Art Deco. At the outbreak of World War II, his use of rigor and beauty fascinated and culminated in his lithographs that showed the horrors and fear of war in the people’s faces in a frightening and evident way.

Bloch was also one of the first artists to address the meager living conditions of African Americans. His later work reflected a moderate expressionism and eventually the influence of Byzantine art. Aviation, 1930, an ironic work that showed only the gawking spectators and not the aviators themselves, was a 23 x 29 cm lithograph.