Hal Bromm is honored to present Burning point, an exhibition of monumental paintings by Grace Graupe-Pillard opening September 9, 2026. The exhibition will be on view at Hal Bromm/Tribeca through November 21, 2026.

Grace Graupe-Pillard (b. 1941, Manhattan, NY) has spent more than five decades creating art that, in her own words, “reconciles the personal with the political”. Her work is very much in tune with our times. Having exhibited with Hal Bromm since the early 80s, she has always had her finger on the pulse of society's mood and cultural climate. In the aftermath of 9/11, she sensed the shifts beginning to alter the world. Through the Iraq war, Afghanistan, the explosive Middle East and early MAGA moment, and now during the ICE age, domestic political upheaval and the Iran war, Graupe-Pillard’s focus has remained sharp.

The daughter of German Jewish refugees who fled Nazi persecution, and whose paternal grandparents died in Theresienstadt, Graupe-Pillard came of age with an acute awareness of injustice and a deep sensitivity toward those whom governments and societies overlook. Finding herself amidst a period of shifts in her personal life that coincided with the geopolitical fallout of 9/11, Graupe-Pillard’s work became saturated in imagery of disintegration, displacement, and fragmentation:

I document global genocide and the anguish of innocent civilians caught in a spiral of death and destruction...
In a universe where terrorism, ethnic cleansing, environmental and cultural upheaval have dominated the news cycles, I look at the devastating impact of hostilities on the populace, with a visual dissolution of camouflage-like forms, fragmenting the picture plane as it does people’s lives.

The body of work featured in Burning point amplifies this feeling of dissolution; how the violence perpetrated against innocent lives becomes obfuscated against a backdrop of divisive politics and a news cycle fueled by sensationalism over truth. Taking after Goya, Graupe-Pillard distills the imagery of the headlines into large-scale ‘history paintings’ that begin to dissolve under the weight of a culture urging us to look away, even as the atrocities arrive on our doorstep. Each painting begins with photographs which the artist then re-imagines through digital manipulation and recomposition; civilians become faceless shapes among the abstract reality of a war only experienced through the media, eruptions of flames are refracted through kaleidoscopic photo-composites. These alterations are reflective of the manner in which truth becomes distorted as information is filtered through algorithmic digital mediators, arriving on our screens only after it has been twisted into something almost unrecognizable. The imagery mirrors the fracturing of people’s lives under state violence.

Driven by a personal ethic of care and solidarity, Graupe-Pillard approaches these works with an unflinching moral imperative to address the injustice of violence and oppression, laying bare the falsehood of American democracy that continues to be written in the blood of innocent people. An overwhelming sense of anger radiates from the canvas surface, confronting viewers with horrors they were told could never happen here. At a time when our government is stripping away the rights of women, immigrants, people of color, and trans people, deploying the military against its own citizens, taking people from their homes, and murdering people in broad daylight for the simple act of standing up for their neighbors, Graupe-Pillard’s work serves as a grim reminder that we have been complacent for far too long as democracy crumbled around us. Now the campaign of violence that America has inflicted upon the world has finally made it home.