He began what he believed were his most important paintings to date, the War Series, inspired by the photographs of the concentration camp survivors taken only minutes after they had been liberated. When he first showed his father the photographs in LIFE magazine just after the war, his father spent hours with a magnifying glass looking for his cousins among the living skeletons. Arnold painted eighteen canvases—Celebration of the Survivors, The Raped, The Phoenix Bird, Dance of the Survivors, The Survivors, The Death Cart, to name a few. He painted and drew with a superhuman intensity that artists feel only once or twice in a life, the galloping exhilaration when a story reveals itself faster than you can get it down.

The War Series was exhibited to some fanfare in the inaugural show of a gallery downtown. The press was excellent, a rave in the Los Angeles Times, but nothing sold. Who wants concentration camp survivors, even those dancing in celebration of their freedom, on their living room walls?