The Art of Elias Friedensohn
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Early Paintings

As a young painter, Friedensohn turned to the Bible, Greek and Roman myths, and folk tales for his themes. He pursued universality. Among his earliest paintings are single figures enveloped in secrecy. They have oblate, swollen heads and skin hardened into a plaster-like mask. What are the possibilities of communication? Can these subjects escape from the fury of the secret within? Isolated, they need to confess, to find intimacy.