War painter

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The German Ernst Vollbehr on the Black Sea (1942)
The sinking HMS Hood , in front of it the HMS Prince of Wales . Painting by the German Julius C. Schmitz-Westerholt (1941)
German war painter in France in front of a K 12 (1941)
Václav Sochor : The Battery of the Dead (HGM)
Rudolf Otto von Ottenfeld : A fame sheet of the Austrian artillery (HGM).

War painters (sometimes also war sculptors ) were artists ( painters or sculptors ) who were officially commissioned to record the war in pictures and drawings at the front . The task of the war painters was to glorify the war, to motivate the soldiers ideologically and to support morale.

history

There were war painters in numerous countries, for example in the Austro-Hungarian army, in Spain, in Japan, in Russia, in Great Britain and in Germany (members of the German propaganda companies ).

During the First World War, her paintings and drawings were shown at so-called war exhibitions alongside looted weapons, uniforms and other militaria , and were published in the local press and in front-line newspapers. Today some works by British war painters can be seen at the Imperial War Museum in London.

The war painters were supplemented by war photographers and war correspondents as early as the Crimean War (1853–1856) . In the kuk army , 346 artists were organized in the art group of the kuk war press quarter .

The magazine Illustrierte Geschichte des Weltkrieges , published between 1914 and 1918, shows a high proportion of black and white images of war paintings at the beginning, but decreasing in the later issues. Volume VIII shows on page 17 a battle between Indian and English lancers in the Turkish machine gun flank fire in the Gaza area, subtitled with the words: "Based on an original drawing by the war painter Fritz Grotemeyer, who was admitted to the Ottoman Army ".

The exhibition “ German Artists and the SS ” (1944) highlighted some of the painters on display as “war painters”.

Museum reception

In the Vienna Museum of Military History is a picture gallery of important and battle war artist, the war in the art from the late 16th century is reflected up to the present in. Several of them are monumental in size.

Well-known war painters (selection)

Crossing the Save , a triptych by Elmar von Eschwege from 1915. It depicts the conquest of Belgrade by the Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 208 .
Crossing on the Upper Rhine (painting by Wilhelm Sauter from 1942 with the Stephansmünster in Breisach in the background)

See also

literature

Articles and treatises

  • Liselotte Popelka : From hurray to the corpse field. Paintings from the war picture collection 1914–1918. Army History Museum , Vienna 1981.
  • Wolfgang Schmidt: painter at the front. The war painters of the Wehrmacht and their pictures of fight and death. In: Arbeitskreis Historische Bildforschung (Ed.): The war in pictures, pictures of war. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-631-39479-9 , pp. 45-76.
  • Annegret Jürgens-Kirchhoff: War painter. In: Gerhard Hirschfeld , Gerd Krumeich , Irina Renz (eds.): Encyclopedia First World War. 2nd edition, Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-8252-8551-7 , pp. 653f.

Exhibition catalogs

  • Liselotte Popelka ( arr .): “Flies 90/71” , catalog for the exhibition Flies in the First World War , Part II: Paintings and drawings. Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna 1971.
  • Helmut Schneider: war painter, painter in war. Stadtmuseum, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-922046-66-5 .
  • Massimo Libardi: Pittori al fronte nella grande guerra. Nicolodi, Rovereto 2004, ISBN 88-87667-07-1 .

Contemporary documents

  • Masterpieces of war painting. Weber, Leipzig 1916.
  • Reichsführer SS / SS-Hauptamt Berlin-Grunewald (ed.): German artists and the SS . Exhibition Salzburg July 1944. F. Bruckmann, Munich 1944 (exhibition catalog)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Austrian State Archives - War Archives , Army High Command , War Press Quarters, the presence of the members of the War Press Quarters, 1914/1918.
  2. ^ Manfried Rauchsteiner (text), Manfred Litscher (photos.): The Army History Museum in Vienna. Verlag Styria, Graz 2000, ISBN 3-222-12834-0 .
  3. ^ Hans Wille: Adolf Erbslöh, 1881-1947, with a catalog of the paintings. Art and Museum Association, Wuppertal 1967, no p.

Web links