The Last Supper

In 1936, with the threat of a second world war looming large, Eby published War, a collection of etchings, drawings, drypoints, and lithographs drawn from his own experiences. The book contains a drawing of The Last Supper, which was made into an etching the following year. Here Eby rewrites the traditional scene of Christ’s Last Supper to condemn, in his words, "the incredible folly of supposedly Christian nations" who betray their sons by creating wars in which they must forfeit their lives. Eby calls our attention to the sacrifice of each of these innocents led to the "wholesale slaughter" of war, questioning its necessity through his refusal of any heroizing visual rhetoric. The eucharistic elements— the bread and the wine on the table—are not sanctified but instead highly ironized by the grotesque portrayal of broken flesh and spilled blood.