Walter Max Lewy (1905 1995) was a Surrealist painter and graphic designer who worked in Brazil for most of his career. Born in Germany to a Jewish family, the artist was forced to flee Europe in the eve of the Second World War, finding a safe haven in the city of São Paulo. The citys budding modern art scene provided solid ground for Lewys art to flourish. His achievements epitomize the global occurrence of Modernism, in its manifestations outside the traditional Western artistic centers of the world. This thesis is the first comprehensive analysis of Walter Lewys life and work to be written in English. It examines his body of work that consists of paintings, prints and illustrations, from the first woodcuts made in the Weimar Republic (1919 1933) in Germany through the massive number of Surrealist paintings the artist had produced by the end of the military dictatorship (1964 1985) in Brazil. The aim of this thesis is to make the work of this somewhat forgotten figure available to a wider audience, as well as to preserve Lewys legacy as a relevant player in the development of Brazilian modern art.

I constantly migrate and among many places and always to and fro I do it alone, although many people act like me Agnes Heller Three years ago, I left my home country of Iran for many reasons. I wanted something new in my life: new challenges and new experiences. This move expanded my world. I was not satisfied in Iran and, the United States was always the place I dreamed about being; I had an American dream and I decided my dream should become true. I became an immigrant. As my world expanded, I lost my comfort and security. I began to realize that what I thought America would be was different than the reality I found... I lost all the things I had. I chose to lose. When I came here, I had hard days, but I did not give up, and my thesis exhibition, All Are Immigrants, narrates my story as an immigrant with a Persian perspective. My work uses the multimedia forms of video art, sound installation and photography as a collaged reflection of my nostalgia for the past, and my transition adjusting to this new culture. The works explore more than my disappointment of the reality being different from my dream but they also extend to my status of trying to fill a void in my everyday life as an American immigrant. I found myself with this huge metaphorical void in my body. I found this hole after my immigration, a lack of something. The image of the hole means many things to me, but it is mostly representative of the deep pain I encounteredpain from my previous life, memories and my Persian identity, transition time here and the disappointment of my American dream. My work is informed by artists such as Kim Sooja, Anna Diprospero, Alex Prager, Nooshin Rosatmi (Iranian-New York artist), and Gohar Dashti. I believe that everyone has holes in their lives and feelings of loneliness; we can all relate to this aspect of the immigrant experience. I invite my audience to see my life after immigration and empathize, as I struggle to bridge my constructed fantasy of American life with the reality I faced me. The exhibitions goal is to change the culture towards immigrants here and dispel the illusions about my country spread in the media. Some of these questions are painful and cause anxiety. In Iran, the America media shows false dreams to us about the U.S., while people here think wrongly about Iran based on the news and media.

Drugged Paranoia and Warlust are stories of human depravity and violence that happened on an abandoned U.S. military base in the rural world of Indiana. These tales are told through a series of prints, drawings, animation and a comic. Scenes of bombings, mass graves, and drug overdoses are presented as humorous cartoons in playful colors to subvert the viewer into exploring imagery that discusses serious and somewhat bleak issues. The work in this exhibition is both satire of absurd events and trying to find meaning amongst madness.

Less Class, More Sass! is a visual soundtrack to the crass jokes, hairy faces and smelly wardrobes of my disorderly, and politically incorrect friends. These young men and women have mutated into a ragged crew of personified sasquatches to tell a collection of stories about coming of age in the American punk and metal music subcultures. <br><br> In this series of prints the characters grow from aimlessly rebellious youths into hopeless but happy young adults, ashamed of their desires for a nice neighborhood and a steady job. While thrashing through a sea of self-destructive tendencies, each character slowly finds their inner resilience empowering them to stay afloat and keep swimming.

Ordinary Perspective is a body of ceramic work that shows a representation of a typical day, highlighting ordinary moments and creating a portrait of everyday life. This work distills down experiences into still images that sum-up the experience of the In-Between moments. These are the times that are not committed to memory, but are an essential part of our everyday lives. In this body of work I am addressing places where people are expected to take on the role of a loner. By observing people who are together, but not in a group allows me to observe the details of (anti)social situations without any actual interaction. Focusing on idiosyncrasies within the monotony, I suggest narratives through imagery drawn on ceramic forms. This body of work contains panoramic images spanning across multiple functional vessels, small wall tiles, which show more intimate moments inside the home, and large jar forms, which show portraits of people in their daily routine and make eye contact with the viewer to form a personal connection. By focusing on the In-Between parts of the day I am able to show the vulnerability, loneliness, and isolation that can fill much of our daily life

The photographic collection Graviora Manent addresses the complexities and deciphering of human relationships, intensified through the decisive acts of obscuring or revealing formal information. The pictures are made using an alternative French photographic method called mordançage, which physically alters the surface of the gelatin silver print using a combination of chemistry and water. The images frequently include recurring elements of my own dreams, as well as figures set in recognizably interior or exterior environments. Recurring themes in the series include what is public vs. what is private, voyeurism, familiarity, and the unknown.

In Collecting and Selecting, I am exploring the way others adorn their lives and how these elements add up to emblematize the keeper of the treasures. With linoleum relief prints and drawings, I compose a unique type of portraiture that reveals the parallel identity between the way we dress ourselves and our living spaces. Within my process, I capture moments with photographs, draw, carve, print, and cut out the elements that hold a presence of the owner. Utilizing a heightened sense of contrast with black and white images, the textures and details of these objects come alive. Each gallery wall represents a different person, those persons being inspiring artist friends and my Momwhos collected interior is what inspired this concept. These studies produce a visual narrative, which reveal the relationships and connections that we create with the material things that we collect as they become extensions of us.

Damon Hill acts as a physical record of the family folklore of a group of people formed by landscape and kinship. As a member of this group, I have translated my familys stories into a visual narrative as a way to process my own identity in relation to our shared identity. The focus of Damon Hill rests primarily on the lives of my female predecessors, as a way for me to contribute their unique voice to the overarching feminine narrative. I incorporate the visual representation of traditionally feminine handicrafts in order to relay their stories through the primary means of creative expression accessible to women throughout history.

This research explores Giotto di Bondone's (1266-1337) use of empty and concealed space as a means of implying psychological and spiritual concepts. Focused on his narrative frescoes, this project borrows from art historian Mary Pardo's analysis of the Arena Chapel frescoes as examples of Giotto's ingegno, or visual wit. Giotto conveys the emotional and psychological state of his figures as well as the presence of the divine through spatial and architectural divisions between figure groups and the suggestion of narrative elements outside of the viewers' perspective. Along with close visual analysis, this thesis draws on art historical literature on the fresco cycles of the Bardi and Peruzzi Chapels in Florence and the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi. Most prior research on Giotto's fresco cycles only tangentially address his use of spatial compositions. Through highlighting the narrative impact of hidden and omitted elements, this research shows that Giotto's particular use of ingegno not only permeates his larger oeuvre beyond Padua, but is so incorporated into his narrative compositions that many of his stylistic imitators can only mimic his visual wit in a superficial manner.

The Truth About Your Monsters is an immersive and dialogical exhibition formatted as a walk-through storybook environment. Viewers are transported into a childs make believe world through hands-on stations. By building on the skeleton of an archetypal narrative, audience members are encouraged to tap into their own experience as they contribute imagery and action to the narrative. I call on audience members to discuss personal or universal fears by prompting them to draw images of monsters that represent their fear.