Anti-War Art

  The young German artists and intellectuals who served at the front in the First World War found themselves in a world of horror that reshaped their entire visions of culture.  They devoted themselves during the conflict and throughout the 1920s to seeking to capture in their art the experiences of the war, many of them with the express intention of preventing a repetition of the joyous march to battle that had occurred in 1914.

Many of the writers used realistic techniques to prevent the public from ever forgetting the horrors of World War I.  The most influential example of this genre was Erich Maria Remarque's , A Quiet on the Western Front, a novel that undercut the myth of the glory of war so effectively that the Nazi's tried to keep it from the public when it appeared in 1928.  Kurt Tucholsky's sketches in the "Paris and Berlin Reader" also represent attempts to remind the public of the insanity of the war.

Eric Heckel, Zwei Verwundete (Two Wounded Soldiers), 1915

Otto Dix, Selbstbildnis als Soldat (Self-Portrait as a Soldier), 1914

But visual artists often found realism inadequate to capture their experience of the war with realistic techniques.  Many, like Max Beckmann and Eric Heckel  used the distortion of outward forms  that had developed in prewar expressionist painting to convey what the war had meant to them.  But others, like Otto Dix (1891-1969) and George Grosz, carried these techniques beyond the limits of Expressionism and produced twisted visions of the war, that savagely attacked the entire society that had allowed it to happen.  Throughtout the 1920s both artists would repeatedly return to the war, often including within their paintings images of the mutilated veterans who filled the cities of Germany. [More images below. For a remarkable collection of works of art about the First World War from all the major beligerent nations see:     http://www.art-ww1.com/gb/visite.html ]

Otto Dix, Soldier in Agony, 1924

Otto Dix, Wounded Soldier, 1924

Otto Dix, Triptychon Der Krieg (War Triptych), 1929-32
 

Otto Dix, Triptychon Der Krieg (War Triptych), Central Panel 1929-32

George Grosz, The Hero, n.d.