I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect upon entering the exhibition War and Suffering. The works that fill the walls are full of suffering, passion, movement and gruesomeness. The older European prints seem delicately drawn even though the subject matter consists of hanging corpses, marching soldiers and cavalry men of the Napoleonic Wars. These works are much more dramatic and elegant than those of the modern artists affected by war.
One work that caught my eye immediately is Wars, Dread of Mothers by George Rouault. It is an image of a mother holding her child. There is concern and tension in the work that speaks to the ramifications of war; it depicts those who are inadvertently affected by war’s violence through the sacrifice of a loved one. Many of the modern artists featured were former soldiers who translated their experiences through horrific scenes of deformed corpses or bodies of the innocent.
Pablo Picasso’s The Dream and Lie of Franco, II is also moving. I instantly recognized several of the images that eventually appeared in his famous work of art, Guernica. Here, Picasso was working on a commission to create 18 works that would be formatted into postcards when Guernica was bombed, and the work exhibited has the beginning sketches of a masterpiece.
Another element of this exhibition is the Starr Miniature Collection: Military Portrait Miniatures. These elegant images serve as a heroic reflection of the soldiers proudly wearing their uniforms. The small works also provided family members images of their loved ones. I enjoyed looking at these small works very much. In every portrait, it seemed as though a little personality managed to show through each sitter’s expression.
This exhibition really took me by surprise. The works, though painful and unsettling, are a poignant reminder of the casualties of war, then and now.