The Safeguard and digitization of over 1,900 Drawings

LEO MARCHUTZ DREW SPARINGLY DURING THE WAR. Was it due to the lack of materials, or worse: the fear of capture, that undermined all other activity but the immediate concern for survival, as he hid from the Nazis?  We don’t know for sure. What we do know, is that from 1944 to 1947 he drew incessantly. At night when the family was sleeping. Pulling from his imagination, grounded in years of intense observation, he drew fine line, biblical subjects.

“I amassed a huge quantity of drawings“, he would later tell his friend and fellow painter, François de Asis. We conservatively estimate their number at 1,900.

These drawings would fuel Marchutz’s work for over three decades. From the lithographic album The Gospel According to Saint Luke, to his later, large-format paintings, they would remain his infinite source of inspiration on the themes of human betrayal, suffering, and forgiveness.

Many of these fine line pencil drawings were done on butcher paper – the only paper readily available to the artist at the time. From the outset, many of them were barely visible. Today they are in danger of disappearing altogether.