Stéphane Mandelbaum

Rediscovering the transgressive, grotesque drawings of a self-proclaimed "good-for-nothing" artist whose criminal ties cost him his life

Driven by fascination as well as contempt, Belgian artist Stéphane Mandelbaum (1961-86) produced hundreds of drawings within a short creative period of just 10 years. As a descendant of Holocaust survivors, Jewish history and persecution was often at the center of his work. His portraits, reminiscent of the strained, tortured figures of George Grosz, include renderings of Arthur Rimbaud, Francis Bacon, Pierre Goldman, his grandfather Szulim and his father Arié, but also of National Socialist criminals such as Joseph Goebbels and Ernst Röhm. He interspersed these sketches with newspaper clippings or coarse, short, disparaging phrases in Yiddish, Italian, French or German. This monograph captures Mandelbaum's haunting, deliberately provocative oeuvre, permeated by his Jewish descent, Belgium's colonial history and the seedy criminal underworld of Brussels--which ultimately claimed his life.