Marvin Israel's drawing from the Man Series is a savage comment on man's inhumanity to his own kind. This brutal image of a half naked man--whose flesh is bruised and bound in metal, whose head and upraised arms are covered so that only his chin and part of his mouth are visible--is disturbing and unsettling in the extreme. The effect is heightened by the artist's refusal to compromise in any way; not only does he thrust the image to the front of the picture plane, but he eschews the use of color, preferring instead the starkness of grays, blacks and somber browns. Israel's physically tortured and degraded figures are somewhat reminiscent of the psychologically and emotionally tortured figures of Francis Bacon.

Source: Bulletin, January-February, 1978.