Art: Paintings and Sketches

Category: Art: Paintings and Sketches --- See Latest World War I news here.

War: The Prints of Otto Dix is at the National Gallery of Victoria
Feelings ran high against the exhibition of 51 drawings and etchings by Otto Dix, a German artist/soldier. "In Adelaide, there were even some attempts to damage the prints," said one attendant. This is an exhibition that evokes strong reactions with its confronting depictions of the realities of war on the Western Front during the First World War. "Mealtime in the Trenches" shows a soldier swallowing a meal indifferent to the human skeleton trapped in the frozen landscape beside him. "The Sleepers of Fort Vaux" offers images of corpses ripped apart by bullets and bombs, dying soldiers and the victims of poison gas. [ eurekastreet.com.au :: 2008-07-12 :: Art: Paintings and Sketches ]

Anzac icon under the hammer - Simpson and his Donkey painting
One of the Anzac history's most honoured icons - the "Simpson and his Donkey" painting - will be auctioned. Painted by New Zealand sapper Horace Moore-Jones it shows John Simpson Kirkpatrick and his donkey carrying a wounded man down to the beach at Gallipoli. Moore-Jones painted at least 5 pictures of Simpson - a heroic figure for braving Turkish fire at Gallipoli rescuing wounded men - and his donkey and the one to be auctioned at Webb's in Auckland has been in a family for generations. It was given to them by Moore-Jones himself. Webbs fine art head Emma Fox told it was a "spine-chilling" work. [ stuff :: 2008-04-04 :: Art: Paintings and Sketches ]

George Grosz: Work of German artist on display at MET
A German artist George Grosz skewered the excesses of the 1920s Weimar Republic and lived in Douglaston after he fled the Nazi regime. He is among the artists in the MET's "Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s" exhibit. He worked as an illustrator for Kaiser Wilhelm before the war, but he was drafted to the front lines of the German army during WW1 and was confined in an insane asylum in 1917. He was radicalized by the horrors he saw in World War 1, and his grotesque sketches and oil paintings of figures in German culture in the 1920s earned him the scorn of the rising Nazi party. [ timesledger :: 2007-02-16 :: Art: Paintings and Sketches ]

Artists' Views of First World War on display in Block Museum
A new exhibit on World War 1 art at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art reveals the experiences of war from the artist's angle. "From the Trenches to the Street: Art from Germany, 1910s-1920s" shows a variety of German works, including paintings and etchings, and combines the patriotic imagery of the war's early years with the violent works of protest that came later. Corinne Granoff began planning the exhibit in the spring of 2006 as a collection of post-WWI German art, but it became a chance to examine how artists view war. Much of the exhibit is devoted to military and battlefield imagery featuring trenches, corpses and the wounded. [ dailynorthwestern :: 2007-02-10 :: Art: Paintings and Sketches ]

World War One Sketchbook from 1917-1918 trenches
The images presented on this site are from a set of two World War 1 sketchbooks archived in the University of Victoria's Special Collections Library. They contain 130 water-colour and pen and ink images which were produced by a British soldier based in France and Belgium 1917-1918. Artist was a member of the Royal Horse and Royal Field Artillery (the regimental crest and motto appear at the top of the page) and he was based in France and Belgium (around Ypres and Menin) between 1917-1918. [ uvic :: 2007-01-12 :: Photographs, Pictures & Images ]

First world war war-time trench art
"Trench art" refers to objects or mementos made by soldiers or POWs during World War 1. Objects used to make trench art were artillery shell fragments, helmets and military uniform buttons. Wood from airplane propellers was used to carve clocks and picture frames. Items like matchbox covers, cigarette cases and lighters were bought by the POWs captors. Usually trench art pieces bear no maker's mark. The Rosenberg Library is showing trench art in its collection, like a model submarine made from shell cartridges, a letter opener decorated with a copper German coin pfennig and an ashtray featuring a miniature Prussian helmet called a pickelhaube. [ galvestondailynews :: 2006-12-05 :: Memorabilia & Collectibles ]

World War I battlefield Somme crosses reunited in display
Three wooden crosses erected at the Somme in memory of County Durham soldiers have been reunited. In 1916 the memorials were placed on the ancient burial mound which overlooks the World War I battlefield in France. Ten years later they were given to three County Durham churches. they have been brought together at Durham Light Infantry Museum and Durham Art Gallery for exhibition called The Somme Remembered, marking the 90th anniversary of the battle including trench maps, sketches and original letters, runs until Sunday 16 July. [ bbc :: 2006-06-20 :: Battle of the Somme ]

Painting and drawing combat - Britain's bloodiest battle
Amid the carnage of the Battle of the Somme, a handful of British soldiers were on a mission as new as the warfare they were witnessing: they were painting and drawing combat. An exhibition will open commemorating the 1916 battle, which claimed 310,000 lives and left more than a million wounded. The First World War battle was the first in which officially-sanctioned artists were sent by the UK to record a campaign. The Battle of the Somme brought home for the first time the full horror of mechanised warfare and the lethal power of the machine-gun. The opening day was the bloodiest in the history of the British Army, claiming 19,240 lives. [ independent :: 2006-05-26 :: Art: Paintings and Sketches ]

Cartoon by Old Bill creator is found in an old box at museum
A long lost cartoon by an artist, whose work raised the morale of troops during the Great War, has been discovered by chance in a Scottish museum. The work by Bruce Bairnsfather, the creator of the cartoon character Old Bill, was found by a curator in an old box at Dunfermline Museum. The picture depicts a soldier in an embrace with a girl. Both of them are wearing anti-gas goggles. It was published in London in Bystander magazine on December 4, 1918, and later in a book called Fragments from France. The picture, a monochrome watercolour, went missing after it was sold at an exhibition of the cartoonist's work in 1919. [ telegraph :: 2002-11-14 :: Art: Paintings and Sketches ]

First World War in the News is an edited review of hand-picked World War I 1914-1918 articles.