After World War II, European artists, writers, and thinkers struggled to come to terms with not only the physical destruction wrought by war, but with its psychological toll. Existentialism was a philosophical response popularized by French thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), whose treatise Being and Nothingness (1943) described the anxiety and meaningless of existence, as well as the pursuit of authenticity in life. Existentialism was a powerful influence on post-war art in Europe and its themes were explored by artists such as Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti, and Jean Dubuffet.