Collin Stringer
Dr. Mintler
EXPO 1213
5/2/25
How does war affect the nations of the fighting? How can art work to reflect the ideas and scars of different peoples? World War One was known as the Great war, the war to end all wars, this was the most trumedic war both on the people fighting, those back at home, and even the land itself. These scars of war can be seen in Germany in the Expressionist movement, Britain with the Surrealist works, France artest with Cubism, and Russia with its crazy Abstraction works. These diverging paths illustrate the cultural whiplash of the postwar world and demonstrate how art became a crucial tool for processing collective trauma and PTSD.
These enormous shifts were not merely structural—they were deeply personal. While historians often examine this era through the lens of treaties, revolutions, and policy shifts, art offers a more emotional view. It provides a portal into the thoughts and fears of the people who endured the chaos. In this way, art becomes an emotional historical account, documenting not just what happened, but how it felt to live through such horrick times.
As the world grappled with the trauma of war and the speed of modern change, artists responded by moving in two radical directions. Some clung to realism, using their art to document the raw and horrific truths of the world. Others abandoned structure and logic altogether, diving into the realms of surrealism and absurdism to reflect the madness and uncertainty of the times.
One of the best examples of postwar realism can be found in the work of Otto Dix. A German soldier who served in the trenches, Dix portrayed his firsthand experiences into a series of horrifically real works. His collection The War: does not glorify battle; instead, it reveals the Figure 1: The War By Otto Dix
dehumanizing nature of trench warfare. His paintings are filled with corpses, skeletal remains, gas masks, and disfigured soldiers. The landscape itself is scared, burned, exploded, and devoid of life. Dix’s Expressionism confronts the viewer with uncomfortable truths, forcing them to acknowledge the true cost of the Great War. “focused on the aftermath of battle: dead, dying, and shell-shocked soldiers, bombed-out landscapes, and graves.” (MoMA) all of the works in this collection are visualizations of the mental scars gotten from trench warfare, all of the mangled corpses and horrors just to go back home to a ruined nation. This art is dark and it perfectly reflects germany after the first world war
For Dix and many other German artists, the war’s aftermath was not one of triumph, but of loss, shame, and hardship. Germany, having lost the war, was plunged into economic despair under the weight of the Treaty of Versailles. Political extremism exploded, and the German people were left in a divided republic. In this context, the harsh visual language of Dix’s realism becomes not just a record of war, but a personal recentering on what matters to people over politics as that’s what started the war and what led to the trauma.
Elsewhere in Europe, artists sought different ways to depict the complexities of postwar life. The surrealists, many of whom were also shaped by wartime experiences, turned inward, exploring the dreamscape of the subconscious as a means of confronting psychological trauma. Artists like Max Beckmann and Paul Nash embodied this liminal space between external reality and internal emotion.
Beckmann’s painting The Night presents a haunting, claustrophobic scene where a family is assaulted in their own home, their bodies twisted in panic and pain. Though the event is fictional, it resonates with the real violence and instability that plagued Weimar Germany. The image speaks to the violation of safety and the loss of order that defined the postwar experience. Beckmann, who had served as a medic during the war, suffered a nervous breakdown in 1915 and was discharged. “Beckmann used himself as a model for the man in the noose.”(Wikipedia) All parts of this work build up to this idea of violation and failure. Beckmann was a Broken man in a broken land. His surreal works often reflect this fractured mental state, mixing distorted figures with oppressive symbolism. This could also be representative of Germany and their loss in the war. Figure 2: The Night By Max Beckmann
Paul Nash, on the other hand, brings a slightly more optimistic tone to the surrealist palette. His 1918 painting We Are Making a New World depicts a ruined battlefield under a rising sun. The earth is ravaged, but the light in the sky suggests the possibility of rebirth. As a British war artist, Nash’s work has a unique position. While Britain was among the victors, the cost of victory was enormous, with a generation of young men lost and an entire culture grappling with disillusionment. Nash’s surrealism captures both the devastation and the hope that came in its wake. Figure 3 We Are Making A New World by Paul Nash
Perhaps the most extreme artistic response to the war, however, was Abstraction, a movement that rejected not only traditional aesthetics, but also meaning itself. The war had shattered long held beliefs in progress and the inherent goodness of people. In the wake of such devastation, some artists concluded that the world no longer made sense, and that art should reflect that senselessness.
Wassily Kandinsky, though primarily associated with abstraction, helped pioneer this shift with works like Composition 8 and Yellow-Red-Blue. These paintings defy narrative or figuration, instead using color, shape, and movement to evoke emotional and psychological states.”the correspondence between colors and forms and their psychological and spiritual effects.”(Guggenheim) Kandinsky, born in Russia but active in Germany, believed that art could express spiritual values beyond the physical world, a belief that resonated deeply in the aftermath of a war that had destroyed so much of the physical one. Figure 4: Composition 8 by Wassily Kandinsky Figure 5: Yellow-Red-Blue by Wassily Kandinsky
French artist Fernand Léger contributed to this new visual language with works like The City, a chaotic yet colorful celebration of urban life and mechanical forms. Appearing more upbeat, Léger’s art also reflects the dissatisfaction of modern life, a life increasingly defined by machinery, speed, isolationism, and loss of connection in favor of economic growth. For nations like France, where much of the war was fought, Cubism offered a way to reclaim a sense of control, or at least to explore new ways of understanding a world that had changed beyond recognition. Figure 6: the City by Fernand Léger
One could say that this geographical art movement based argument is foolish as there are many artworks and artists that do not conform to art styles of each given nation as stated in the aforementioned works. Though this statement has merit, there are always extensions to the rule and the dramatic shift in trends of the art movements in these different nations do point to an underlying theme for each respective nation.
The nationalities and backgrounds of these artists are not incidental; they reflect how different societies processed the trauma of war. German artists, emerging from a defeated and broken nation, often created darker, more introspective works. However British and French artists, while also deeply affected, were more likely to engage with themes of reconstruction and renewal. Russian artists, grappling with both the war and the revolution, pushed into abstraction as a means of ideological and philosophical exploration.
In conclusion for all these peoples, art served as a coping mechanism, and a record. It allowed artists to process grief. It also laid the groundwork for the explosion of modernist movements that would dominate the 20th century from expressionism to abstract expressionism and conceptual art.
Bibliography
Moma | the Collection | Otto Dix. the War (Der Krieg). 1924 (Prints Executed 1923-1924), www.moma.org/s/ge/collection_ge/objbyppib/objbyppib_ppib-12_sov_page-37.html. Accessed 19 Apr. 2025.
We Are Making a New World | Imperial War Museums, www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/20070. Accessed 19 Apr. 2025.
“The Night (1918-19) by Max Beckmann.” Artchive, www.artchive.com/artwork/the-night-max-beckmann-1918-19/. Accessed 8 Jan. 2024.
“The City.” Philadelphia Museum of Art, philamuseum.org/collection/object/53928. Accessed 8 Jan. 2024.
“Tochil’Schik Printsip Mel’Kaniia (the Knife Grinder or Principle of Glittering) Yale University Art Gallery.” Yale University Art Gallery, artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/45338. Accessed 8 Jan. 2024.
“Vasily Kandinsky: Composition 8.” The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation, www.guggenheim.org/artwork/1924. Accessed 8 Jan. 2024.
“Yellow-Red-Blue, 1925 by Wassily Kandinsky.” Wassily Kandinsky, www.wassily-kandinsky.org/Yellow-Red-Blue.jsp#google_vignette. Accessed 8 Jan. 2024.
“The Night (Beckmann).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Apr. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_(Beckmann).
“Paul Nash (Artist).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Apr. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nash_(artist).
