File talk:LUSTING FOR AFRICA 1996.jpg

Lusting for Africa is an almost identical version of German Girl number 2 save for the change from earth color to blue and yellow and is one of a handful of predominantly blue paintings made after the artist's return to Pittsburgh after his December 1995 exhibition at Galeria Magdalena Baxeras in Barcelona that, while keeping the same figurative manner of execution, make the transition from the German Girl series into the beginnings of iconic works on the theme of the Holocaust.

As a continuation of the series of ad pages announcing the Barcelona exhibition in both Artforum and Flash Art, Lusting for Africa is placed with Ashes in the Wind and an untitled third painting to become, at least in photograph, a tryptich used on a two-page ad spread that December 1996 in Artforum.

And though placed together these images represent symbolically that confused period where the overly liberal morals of the Weimar Republic turn abruptly into its Puritan and racist opposite; ultimately, the artist decides to keep the two named works separate because of their visual self-sufficiency and very inherently different psychological intent - with one being a sordid reminder of an autobiographical episode and the other, while a personal expression, clearly a work of mourning that needs to be left solely for quiet reflection.