Passing Train 

Albert Bloch created "Passing Train" using a symphony of earthy hues to portray a landscape laden with symbolic weight. The ghostly figure standing to the left, almost translucent, echoes the ancient motif of the 'wandering soul’. We see this figure emerge through different eras in art, from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to Dante’s Inferno, each time embodying the anxieties of mortality and the afterlife. Even the passing train, obscured yet present, invokes the relentless march of time, an industrial echo of Chronos devouring his children. In contrast to earlier depictions where such figures are explicitly spectral or divine, here the integration with the natural landscape suggests a deep, psychological assimilation—a cultural memory embedded in the very soil. It engages viewers on a deep, subconscious level, tapping into primal fears and hopes about existence beyond our earthly realm. This integration exemplifies the non-linear progression of symbols, resurfacing and evolving, and taking on new meanings in differing historical contexts.