At the top of Behold Man Without God, two armies, birthed from either a subterranean ant colony or a giant hive, are pitted against each other in an unceasing war. In the middle ground, a crowd gazes on an orchestra of pigs performing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Friedrich Schiller’s lyrics to this hymn to universal human kinship are spelled out on a giant tablet and stand in marked contrast to the painting’s acts of aggression.

The work received its title after the artist’s conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1957 and represents Kurelek’s first didactic, emphatically religious painting.