The Dark One

June Wayne, Kafka Series
60 x 28 in.
Oil on canvas, 1950.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
Neuberger Museum of Art, 1997; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1990; de Young Museum, 1956; Art Center of La Jolla, 1954; Pasadena Art lnstitute, 1952; Los Angeles County Museum, 1951; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1951; San Francisco Museum of Art, 1950.

COMMENT
The creature’s head in June Wayne’s oil painting The Dark One it is similar to that in her earlier work The Quiet One (1949), but here it is portrayed as half of an atom bomb, with its other half sitting on the creature's lap. The atom itself is also depicted here, radiating ominously from the image’s center.
—June Wayne, from Robert P. Conway, “A Catalogue Raisonné 1936-2006, June Wayne: The Art of Everything” Rutgers University Press, 2007.

Sketch for The Dark One: Bomb

June Wayne, Kafka Series
6 x 3 3/8 in.
Litho crayon on paper, 1945.

COMMENT
The Sketch for the Dark One: Bomb “came from what I saw in the L.A. Times at the time the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, early August 1945. Atom bomb? Of course nobody knew what that was, so I bought the newspaper. I kept the clipping and the drawing in an envelope, pinned to the wall, and didn’t use it until 1950 for the head of The Dark One.”
—June Wayne, from Robert P. Conway, “A Catalogue Raisonné 1936-2006, June Wayne: The Art of Everything” Rutgers University Press, 2007.

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