The Elements

June Wayne, Kafka Series
27 x 90 in.
Oil on canvas, 1951.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
Neuberger Museum 􀀒f Art, 1997 (illus.); de Young Museum, 1956; Art Center of La Jolla, 1954; Pasadena Art Institute, 1952.

COMMENT
June Wayne’s The Elements was painted close in time to the Kafka Series and echoes a number of its themes.
“Along the middle, black as night, I have a sign of fire with an atomic crystal in the middle. It changes to burned-out cinders. So we have night, day, fire, water, rain, earth, sky, the human heart, the atom bomb, all of those are in the symbol system, and that's why I call it The Elements.”
—June Wayne, from Robert P. Conway, “A Catalogue Raisonné 1936-2006, June Wayne: The Art of Everything” Rutgers University Press, 2007.

 

The Elements