Bodies and Souls
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts 118-128 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States“My concern is with humanity. I want to confront the viewer with life and with what we are doing to each other. I hope to awaken in the viewer a sense of compassion . . . without compassion there is nothing.” —Luis Cruz Azaceta Bodies and Souls examines the liberatory power of figurative art. Though often treated as conservative in the second half of the 20th century, artists used representational and realist methods to assert presence for those omitted from dominant narratives or harmfully depicted by those outside their communities. Realism and representation remain powerful means to show embodied human