No Compromises! the Art of Boris Lurie

Born to a Jewish family in Leningrad, and working in New York from 1946 until his death, Boris Lurie (1924-2008) undertook a savage artistic appraisal of the 20th century that still packs a powerful political punch. Drawing on his experiences of imprisonment in a succession of concentration camps, Lurie's riotous collages and paintings accuse society of shirking responsibility for its crimes against humanity, dovetailing evidence of Nazi atrocities with advertising imagery and everyday banalities.

Published to accompany a retrospective at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, No Compromises examines Lurie's provocative "No art" movement, founded in 1956 in New York in opposition to Abstract Expressionism, Pop art and consumerism in general; his War Series of collages from 1946, which confront viewers with the horrors of the Holocaust and the artist's revulsion toward the art market; and his drawings of the '50s and '60s, which adopt a softer, more poetic tone.