War, violence, and destruction, inevitably and unfortunately, are among the eternal and most popular topics explored by artists of all times and eras. The 19th and 20th centuries demonstrated an unprecedented scale of bloodshed and cruelty, reshaping the world once and for all. Many famous artists experienced combat firsthand while others stayed behind the frontlines. Regardless of their whereabouts, the works created by them turned into powerful anti-war statements. Read on to see seven exceptional works documenting the wartime experiences of seven famous artists.
1. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica
In April 1937, Luftwaffe forces bombed the Spanish town of Guernica at the request of the Spanish Nationalist Faction led by Francisco Franco. In three hours, the 6,000-town was completely destroyed, with thousands of its inhabitants trapped under the rubble. The horrific news of the Guernica bombing spread throughout Europe in hours.
Pablo Picasso had never visited Guernica but was struck by the news. In the following month, he finished a monumental canvas of pain, grief, and agony. Dora Maar, the outstanding Surrealist photographer and then-partner of Picasso, documented the painting process almost from start to finish. Today, some art historians believe that Maar’s influence on the production of this work was much more significant than it is acknowledged. She was a political activist who actively educated Picasso on left-wing politics, and shared with him her ideas on photography and composition. Over the years, Guernica became one of the most recognizable and widely used anti-war works. Modern and contemporary artists like Faith Ringgold referenced Guernica while working on artworks reflecting violence, destruction, and chaos.
2. Otto Dix’s The Trench
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterLike many artists of the twentieth century, Otto Dix experienced combat firsthand, and it radically changed his perception of art. He was one of the leading painters of the New Objectivity movement, which focused on the raw and uncompromising depictions of reality, violence, and decay. In 1923, he completed his monumental work The Trench, a gory mess of bodies in a recently bombed German trench. Their death had no glory and no patriotic fervor, bringing only blood, pain, and disgust.
In 1933, soon after the Nazi party came to power in Germany, Dix was officially prohibited to paint, with most of his works confiscated, including The Trench. It became one of the central exhibits of the infamous Degenerate Art exhibitions, framed as an act of military sabotage and Marxist propaganda. Some of the works from the exhibition were later sold for the benefit of the Third Reich, and The Trench was one of them. However, the painting’s traces vanished in January 1940 and its whereabouts are still unknown. Given the painting’s prominence and size, it was most likely destroyed.
3. Vasily Vereshchagin’s The Apotheosis of War
In the 19th century, the Russian war painter Vasily Vereshchagin created one of the most staggering images of war, shocking in its stillness. The pile of skulls, disfigured by blade slashes and bullet holes, was raised like an inglorious monument to the cruelty of humankind. The painting was inspired partially by legends and partially by Vereshchagin’s own experience in Central Asia, where he served as a painter during the Russian Empire’s military campaign in the late 1860s. Apart from the Russian military activity, the region was troubled by the local conflicts of the Dungan and Manchu peoples that mercilessly destroyed each others’ settlements, leaving piles of bodies behind. The painting’s frame had one last clue to the work, inscribed with the dedication: “to all great conquerors, past, present and to come.”
Vereshchagin worked on the painting in Munich, where he reexamined his years in Central Asia. His paintings of that period received substantial criticism from Russian patriotic forces and accusations of slandering the Imperial army. The artist’s political position remains ambiguous still. Although he volunteered to work during several Russian military campaigns, he refused to accept any titles or privileges from military officials and the royal family.
4. John Singer Sargent’s Gassed
John Singer Sargent, the British painter of American origin, is most commonly associated with society portraits and depictions of upper-class leisure. Yet, he was behind one of the most dramatic paintings of World War I. The monumental canvas showed a line of soldiers, wounded and blinded by a recent poisonous gas attack, holding on to each other on their slow path toward medical units. They are surrounded by hundreds of others, dead and wounded, with planes still carrying on the battle in the clouded sky.
During World War I, Sargent traveled to the frontlines as the official war artist and worked right on the battlefield, frequently catching the enemy’s attention with his instruments. Like many others, Sargent was shocked by the use of mustard gas as a chemical weapon against troops. Within minutes of exposure, the gas caused severe eye burns, skin blisters, and the destruction of one’s lungs from the inside.
5. Francisco Goya’s The Disasters of War Series
The legendary Spanish painter Francisco Goya had a long life and career, both inseparably tied to the history of his home country. In his early sixties, he started to work on a series of prints he never wanted to make public. He intended to keep them solely to himself and show them only to a circle of his trusted friends. Goya was held in high regard by the Spanish and French courts and was reasonably afraid that political criticism would harm his position. This collection of prints was released nearly four decades after the artist’s death.
The album, titled The Disasters of War, reflected Goya’s impression of the Peninsular War, a conflict between Spain and the invading forces of Napoleon Bonaparte. Eighty-two prints demonstrate no political sympathy towards any side of the conflict but rather highlight the brutality of war, the unnecessary cruelty, trauma, and terror beyond any nightmare. Mutilated corpses, suffering civilians, ruined homes, grief, and starvation seem irreversible and eternal. Among the images of death, Goya left a bitter and merciless critique of the authorities and the clergy, unable and unwilling to ease the suffering of the innocent.
6. C.R.W. Nevinson’s Paths of Glory
Christopher Nevinson remains one of the most important British artists who showed World War I in his works. Initially a proponent of Futurism and a friend of Filippo Marinetti, Nevinson moved back to realism after experiencing war. During World War I, he took a position as an ambulance driver, later making this experience a crucial turning point in his artistic identity and an endless source of dramatic stories. However, he only drove the ambulance for a week, since his poor health did not allow him to control vehicles. For another half a year he spent as a medical orderly in a hospital specializing in shell shock treatment, which is currently categorized as PTSD.
Nevinson was a polarizing figure in the European artistic community, mostly due to his personality rather than his painting skills. In his stories, the artist who carefully avoided actual military service, turned into a full-blown hero, experienced in combat. His exaggerated and often simply made-up stories greatly annoyed combat veterans and war artists, yet his artistic skill overruled his personality flaws. Even though Nevinson formally left Futurism in favor of more realistic depictions of warfare, his battlefield works still bore traces of modernist dynamism. His wartime paintings were raw, dramatic, and unapologetically sincere – sometimes even too sincere for the authorities. Many of Nevinson’s World War I paintings were censored because the soldiers he painted were not heroic enough. Nevinson went against all rules, choosing to exhibit the painting Paths of Glory with the label Censored plastered over it.
7. Franz Marc’s Fate of The Animals
Franz Marc’s life was cut short by the events of World War I, which had the most tragic twist for him. A prolific and respected Expressionist artist, he worked with military camouflage. In 1916, the German authorities recognized Marc’s significance as an artist and drafted a document announcing his immediate withdrawal from combat. Unfortunately, the announcement arrived days later after Marc died on the battlefield. Animals were Franz Marc’s favorite painting subjects. Several years before the war, he created the most staggering premonition of the future bloodshed. The painting Fate of The Animals was a dynamic, dizzying image of a forest fire that brought animals into panic. Foxes, deers, and boars threw themselves into flames, seeing no escape.
