Kokoschka's War Paintings

Oskar Kokoschka, Anschluß-Alicia in Wonderland, 1942

Deemed a degenerate by the Nazis, Kokoschka fled Austria in 1934 for Prague. In 1938, when the Czechs began to mobilize for the expected invasion of the Wehrmacht, he fled to the United Kingdom and remained there during the war. The above painting is a harsh satire against the British appeasement policy (Treaty of Munich) which facilitated Hitler's annexion (Anschluß) of Czechoslovakia.

Oskar Kokoschka, Marianne-Maquis, 1942

1942 was a year of deadlock during the Second World War. Whilst the Soviet Union was battling the Nazis in the East, there were repeated calls for British and American governments to launch a Second Front in Western Europe. In Marianne-Maquis, Kokoschka vents his criticism of the allies’ delay by showing British war leaders Winston Churchill and General Montgomery drinking tea in the Café de Paris in Soho. The central figure is Marianne, the traditional personification of France, now linked to the Maquis, the French Resistance.

Oskar Kokoschka, Loreley, 1941

The title Loreley refers to Heinrich Heine's famous poem about a mythical Rhine maiden, who lured sailors to their death. Kokoschka explained that his painting mocks British claims to maritime supremacy:

Britannia no longer rules the waves; inaction has lasted too long; an octopus swims away with a trident, the emblem of marine power. Queen Victoria, who built up the British fleet into a dominant position, rides a shark and stuffs white, brown and black sailors into its mouth. Only the frog on her hand refuses to accept the same fate: it represents Ireland, where there are no reptiles except frogs.

It is interesting to compare Kokoschka's Loreley to another shipwreck piece which - painted by Max Beckmann almost thirty years earlier - can be seen as a vision of the approaching First World War:

Max Beckmann, Sinking of the Titanic, 1912

Otto Dix - Flandern

Otto Dix, Flandern, 1934

Dix worked on this large-format (78 x 98") painting from 1934 to 1936. By that point, the National Socialists had already dismissed him from his professorial position at the Dresden Art Academy, and he was living in Randegg bei Singen. The painting shows a field in Flanders where three devastating battles were fought. In contrast to war-time propaganda images, Dix's canvas introduces war in the form of a battlefield where corpses and mud predominate, the one rotting and merging into the other. With this nightmarish tableau, Dix commemorated the victims of one World War in the hopes of preventing another.

Otto Dix - Transplantation

Otto Dix, Transplantation, 1924

We finally halted, after how many hours? Our exhausted flesh, drained of blood, shaken about in other people's arms. I had to comb my fingers over my face as sticky traces stiffened my skin as they dried. I'm going to be a fine sight by the time they get to me, those two slow-moving nurses walking along the foot of the stretchers and bending for a moment over each wounded man. A hand stuck my new Verdun képi on my head, my velvety blue 'flower pot'. How I looked like Pierrot, so pale and blood-smeared in my beautiful new képi! 

There is a nauseating smell, of coal-tar, bleach and the sickly smell of blood. "A lieutenant from the 106ths, doctor."

They touched me and another needle pricked me. I could see the dark tunic of the major between two white nurses. They were talking to me. I answered "Yes, yes...". And the doctor's voice said, "Can't be evacuated. Military hospital."

Maurice Genevoix, Ceux de 14

Otto Dix - Trenches

Otto Dix, Trenches, 1917

"At that moment, another whistling sound rang out up in the air; we all felt it, our hearts in our mouths, this one's for us. Then a huge, deafening din - the shell had landed right in the midst of us.

Half-dazed, I got to my feet. In the huge shell-hole, machine-gun cartridge belts set off by the explosion glowed with a crude pink light. They lit up the heavy smoke where a mass of twisted blackened bodies lay and the shadows of survivors were running away in every direction. At the same time many appalling screams of pain and appeals for help could be heard.

The dark mass of people turning around the bottom of this glowing, smoking cauldron opened out for a second almost like the vision of a hellish nightmare, the deepest abyss of horror."

Ernst Jünger, Storms of Steel

Franz Marc - Wolves

Franz Marc, The Wolves (Balkan War), 1913

By 1913, Marc sensed the impending disaster of world events. The Wolves (Balkan War) is a personal allegory of the 1912-13 war that ultimately led to World War I. He no longer used peaceful and gentle animals like horses and deer; instead, he presents a pack of wolves.

Marc himself was called to World War I and sent to the front. The great loss of life hurt him greatly, including the many animals that were killed in the war. He wrote to his wife from the battlefield about a painting similar to The Wolves: "it is artistically logical to paint such pictures before a war—but not as stupid reminiscences afterwards, for we must paint constructive pictures denoting the future." This reflects his orientation towards the future and gives The Wolves the function of a warning. Marc was killed at Verdun, France, in 1916.