Fugitive Colors explores the rape of Europe’s artistic patrimony before and during World War II, but it does so at a more personal level than most books I’ve read on the subject (Monuments Men, etc). Jakov Klein, a young Orthodox Jew, is born to be a painter. After a blow-out with his family, he changes his name to Julian Klein and leaves for Paris just before World War II to study art at the École des Beaux-Arts. When he arrives, he is befriended by three other young artists: Felix, a German aristocrat; Adrienne, a young French Jewish woman; and René, a young Jewish man and the most talented artist of the group. Felix is forced to return to Germany to run his father’s company. Though well-aware of the situation in Germany for Jews and abstract artists, Julian and René, wanting to study under a famous abstract expressionist, follow Felix, bringing along a gorgeous model, Charlotte, a former prostitute. Felix, the least talented of the group, like Hitler himself, wants to be an artist but lacks the talent, and becomes heavily involved with the Nazi campaign against “degenerate art.” Julian and René become entrapped in Felix’s machinations and face danger constantly, including being imprisoned in Dachau. Julian becomes a spy, sometimes for both sides, to try to save the artworks that the Reich is destroying.
Barr is quite knowledgable on Abstract Impressionist art (called Entartete Kunst or degenerate art in Germany because it offended Hitler’s aesthetics). She writes not only of the art, artists, and the European art scene in the late 1930s and early 1940s but peels away layers of friendship, jealousy, and physical and emotional love running rampant between the main characters. The characters all undergo some degree of character arc, with Felix’s being somewhat a reversal of his original character. At the end, the story comes full circle in a nice closure.
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Fugitive Colors (Arcade Publishing, October 1, 2013) is available through:
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