Revolt in Auschwitz – Sandro Dragoj

Technique: ink drawing
Size in mounting: 600 × 467 mm
Size without mounting: 420 × 297 mm
Date of completion: 2018
SOLD

Brief history of the work

This drawing was created at the request of Václav Votruba for the black metal band named After Rain. I had already cooperated with this band in the past, having provided them a license for my Path of Twisted Souls artwork to use as the cover for their album Sounds of War. You can listen to the whole album HERE.

The theme of their upcoming album was fitting for the genre, but focused on quite a different concept. The album’s premise was based on a historical event that took place in the time of the Nazi Third Reich, during which the Nazis deported the Jewish population not only from Germany into concentration camps. One of them was Auschwitz. There, despite the miserable conditions and the cruel, sadistic security, happened an uprising, during which one of the cremation ovens got blown up.

My goal when creating this artwork was to convey the suffering of the Jewish generation, not only in Auschwitz concentration camp, but in terms of the total destruction and despair brought about when Hitler’s Third Reich brutalized humanity beyond all limits. It is my belief that this horror should always be remembered as an eye-opening lesson of how destructive excessive trust in authority can become, overshadowing man’s vital individuality and freedom. If only we could hope that there would never again be a similar genocide, or any genocide at all, in the history of mankind. But this hope is naive, like would be shouting at a hyena to “just” abandon its bestiality and adopt humane moral traits of peace and harmony instead.

Details of the work in progress

Sad fate of the planned album

The album is supposed to be complete nowadays and, according to the After Rain band’s frontman Václav Votruba, it is the best. However, somehow things did not turn out as expected: although everything is said to be finished, the album remains only in archives.

Technical aspects of the artwork

This piece was made with ink drawing technique, but at the time I was already testing the limits and possibilities of that medium. I needed to make decisions about the direction I wanted to take in my future artworks. Creating this piece became one of the major milestones in the development of the Brilliantis technique.