Anatomy of an Artwork: Henry Koerner Subverts Reality in The Rosebush

Painted in 1950 and 1951, Henry Koerner’s The Rosebush is a masterful subversion of a hyper-realistic painting within an eerie and dreamlike scene. The piece reflects the artist’s own harrowing life story. Born in Austria in 1915, Koerner fled a war-torn Europe for America in 1938. After the war, he discovered that his parents and brother had died in the Holocaust. In this episode of Anatomy of an Artwork, uncover the details of The Rosebush is a highlight of the American Art auction (11 December 2020, New York).