When one looks at the painting The Intellectual Emigration by Arthur Kaufmann, one notices the accurately painted faces that dominate the work. In the left section of the painting, which with its swastika visibly symbolises Germany, one sees a stream of people without recognisable facial features. As a whole, the unbalanced proportions of the painting have a strong effect, and they are also due to the long creative process: Kaufmann worked on the painting in a number of stages over a period of 26 years. 

He began working on this large-scale piece in 1938 in New York. He first produced 38 individual portraits. He also did some of this work to earn a living: after his emigration from Germany he worked as a portrait painter in The Hague. The individual portraits were studies for the great triptych that Kaufmann only completed as a collage in 1964. The title The Intellectual Emigration is derived from the people that are represented. They are artists and scientists that went into exile from 1933 on, including Fred Dolbin, Albert Einstein, Otto Klemperer, Fritz Lang, Heinrich Mann, Klaus Mann, Thomas Mann, Erwin Piscator, Arnold Schönberg, Kurt Weill and Arnold Zweig. Kaufmann also immortalised himself and his wife in the painting.