Fallen Figure (Fallen Fighter), 1971

About the Work

The stronger of the two fighters brutally attacks his opponent, who has already collapsed to the floor. The flesh of each is an open wound, smeared with blood, as though torn to shreds in the course of a bitter struggle. Leon Golub painted the larger-than-life figures on canvas, which now hangs limp and slightly wavy, as though it were itself skin torn from a body. With poses borrowed from the pictorial vocabulary of antiquity, the protagonists are archetypes of genuine masculine excesses of power and violence. Golub’s paintings oscillate subtly between fascination and revulsion.