Burial 1945

lithograph (#1/4)

limited edition of 4 prints only

9 x 13.5 inches

1969

signed

framed

Catalogue No: TNYIL-225

As an Ontario College of Art student, Nyilasi learned to accurately render a skeleton drawing in his anatomy classes. He applied this skill in creating the lithographic drawing for this print. The image is based on a childhood memory which he never was able to forget.

Nyilasi grew up during World War Two in a small Hungarian village just under the Pilis Mountains, which became a central point for the German and Russian armies in their fight for control of Europe. After a major Russian defeat, German soldiers deserted, running up into the forested mountain ranges to hide. After the war, villagers who went up into the mountains to collect mushrooms or get firewood often came across a decomposing soldier’s body. Nyilasi, then a nine-year-old boy, was foraging with his mother in the mountains when they chanced upon this human skeleton with wildflowers and weeds growing up through the ribcage. His mother, who was deeply shaken, sent the men of the village up to bury the remains; and the impressionable boy never forgot the image of what he had seen.

He recognized it as the terrible loss of life caused by war. In this image, the skull looks dead and senseless while at the same time it seems to be alive, with the facial features (suggested by the nose and eye cavities, as well as the teeth) tilted upward to look at the beautiful sky. The corpse is presented in stasis, but around it nature continues to grow and thrive, uncaringly pushing up and through the skeletal remains.