Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One

Tate Britain, Linbury Galleries

 5 June – 23 September 2018

George Grosz Grey Day 1921. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie. Acquired by the Federal State of Berlin © Estate of George Grosz, Princeton, N.J. 2018.

Marking 100 years since the end of the First World War, this exhibition explores the immediate impact of the conflict on British, German and French art. As the first exhibition to examine the culture of memorials alongside new developments in post-war art it will consider how artists responded to the physical and psychological scars left on Europe. Aftermath brings together over 150 works from 1916 to 1932 by artists including George Grosz, Fernand Léger and C.R.W. Nevinson. During this tumultuous period, artists began to explore new imagery and new ways of making art in their responses to the experience of war, the culture of remembrance, and the rebuilding of cities and societies.

The First World War began to be constructed as memory almost as soon as it had begun. During the war artists created works which reflected on its long-term impact. Battlefield landscapes and images of soldiers’s graves such as

 

William Orpen’s A Grave in a Trench 1917

 

and Paul Jouve’s Tombe d’un soldat serbe a Kenali 1917 evoked silence and absence in the aftermath of battle.

After the armistice official public memorials provided a focus for mourning and remembrance. Artists including Käthe Kollwitz, André Mare and Charles Sargeant Jagger produced sculptural memorials to commemorate those who lost their lives in the conflict. The exhibition explores the different forms that memorials took, and their importance for social and political cohesion. It also shows the more personal memorials created using relics of the battlefield such as shrapnel and mortar shells.

Soldiers’ wounds were an alternative memorial, visible in flesh rather than stone, and disabled veterans were a constant reminder of the terrible cost of war.

Works such as

George Grosz (1893-1959)

Grey Day

1921

Oil paint on canvas

1150 x 800 mm

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie. Acquired by the Federal State of Berlin.

© Estate of George Grosz, Princeton, N.J. 2018. 

George Grosz’s Grey Day 1921

Otto Dix (1891-1969)

Prostitute and Disabled War Veteran. Two Victims of Capitalism

1923

Pen and ink on yellow card-board

469 x 373 mm

LWL- Museum für Kunst and Kultur (Westfälisches Landesmuseum) / Sabine Ahlbrand-Dornseif. © Estate of Otto Dix 2018.

and Otto Dix’s Prostitute and Disabled War Veteran 1923 used imagery of disabled veterans to demonstrate the inequalities in German society. In France, veterans were an important part of the visual culture of memorial ceremonies. In Britain, images of wounded soldiers such as Henry Tonks’s medical pastel portraits were usually seen in the context of therapy and healing.

This turbulent period also saw the birth of dada and surrealism in the work of Hannah Höch, Max Ernst, André Masson and Edward Burra among others. Artists used new visual forms to process experiences and memories of conflict. Dada photomontages by Hannah Höch reused war imagery while fragmented bodies and prosthetic limbs featured in works like Grosz and Heartfield’s The Petit-Bourgeois Philistine Heartfield Gone Wild. Electro-Mechanical Tatlin Sculpture 1920.

As well as the physical and psychological scars left on Europe, the exhibition also shows how post-war society began to rebuild itself, inspiring artists such as Georges Braque, Christian Schad and Winifred Knights to return to classicism and tradition while others such as Fernand Léger, Paul Citroen and C.R.W. Nevinson turned their minds to visions of a technological future in the modern city.

Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One is curated by Dr Emma Chambers, Curator, Modern British Art and Dr Rachel Rose Smith, Assistant Curator, Modern British Art.

 

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue from Tate Publishing .

Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One

Tate Britain, 5 June – 20 September 2018

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889 – 1946)

Paths of Glory

1917

Oil paint on canvas

457 x 609 mm

© IWM (Art.IWM ART 518)

Christian Schad 1894 – 1982

Self-Portrait

1927

Oil on wood

760 x 620 mm

Lent from a private collection 1994

© Christian Schad Stiftung Aschaffenburg/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn and DACS, London 2017

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889 – 1946)

Ypres After the First Bombardment

1916

Oil paint on canvas

991 x 1248 x 73 mm

Museums Sheffield 

Curt Querner (1904 – 1976)

Demonstration

1930

Oil paint on canvas

870 x 660 mm

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie.

Photo credit: bpk/ Jörg P. Anders

© DACS, 2018

Edward Burra 1905-1976

The Snack Bar

1930

Oil paint on canvas

762 x 559 mm

Tate

© The estate of Edward Burra, courtesy Lefevre Fine Art, London

George Grosz (1893-1959)

“Daum” Marries her Pedantic Automaton “George” in May 1920, John Heartfield is Very Glad of It (Meta-Mech. Constr. After Prof. R. Huasmann)

1920

Watercolour, pencil, pen, ink and collage on card

425 x 319 mm

Berlinische Galerie, Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Berlin

© Estate of George Grosz, Princeton, N.J. 2018. 

George Grosz (1893-1959)

The Petit-Bourgeois Philistine Heartfield Gone Wild. Electro-Mechanical Tatlin Sculpture

1920

900 x 450 x 450 mm

Berlinische Galerie, Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Berlin

© Estate of George Grosz, Princeton, N.J. 2018. 

Georges Rouault (1871-1958)

"Arise, you dead!" (War, plate 54)

1922-27

Photo-etching, aquatint and drypoint on paper

800 x 630 x 30 mm

Fondation Georges Rouault

© ADAGCP, Paris and DACS, London 2018

Hannah Hoch (1889 – 1978)

Dada Rundschau

1919

437 x 345 mm

Berlinische Galerie, Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Berlin

© DACS, 2018

Jacob Epstein (1880-1959)

Torso in Metal from “The Rock Drill”

1913-14

Bronze

705 x 584 x 445 mm

Tate

© The Estate of Jacob Epstein

Otto Dix (1891-1969)

War: Skull

1924

Etching on paper

257 x 195 mm

The George Economou Collection.

© Estate of Otto Dix 2018

Paul Nash (1889 – 1946)

Wire

1918-9

Watercolour, chalk and ink on paper

486 x 635 mm

© IWM (Art.IWM ART 2705)

William Orpen (1878 – 1931)

To the Unknown British Soldier in France

1921-8

Oil paint on canvas

1542 x 1289 mm

© IWM (Art.IWM ART 4438)

William Roberts (1895 – 1980)

The Dance Club (The Jazz Party)

1923

Oil paint on canvas

762 x 1066 mm

Leeds Museums and Galleries

© Estate of John David Roberts. By permission of the Treasury Solicitor