Richard Heipp: Germanic Guilt Symbols

Richard Heipp’s photorealist paintings combine personal and cultural symbols of fear and security with images from historic photos used in the German race propaganda of the 1930s and 40s. A descendant of German immigrants and professor of art at the University of Florida, Heipp says that his provocative Germanic Guilt series “addresses autobiographical concerns dealing with [his] cultural heritage.”

He works through issues of his own identity by using his likeness in the paintings layered over those of what the Nazis viewed as stereotypical Jews. At the same time, the works focus on the potential of one group to dehumanize and victimize another.

The exhibition is on loan from the artist.