A painter and printmaker best known for political and social commentaries, Jack Levine drew inspiration from satirical German expressionist artists, such as George Grosz and Oskar Kokoscha, and took stylistic cues from the paintings of Titian, Diego Velázquez, and Francisco de Goya. Rejecting the formal qualities and ideologies of contemporary art movements, Levine caricatured 20th-century issues—inequality, big business, militarism, racism, political corruption, and human folly—to express disappointment in American culture. His painting Welcome Home (1946), which features an armchair general flanked by businessmen and socialites, was denounced by President Eisenhower and caught the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1959. During a trip to Europe after World War II, Levine was exposed to the mannerist style of El Greco, and he started creating figures with exaggerated, distorted, taffy-like faces to suggest the effects of excessive power.