Graham Sutherland - The Wartime Drawings

I managed to get this book out of the library which I refered to earlier on in my blog. One of the first chapters gives a description of the brutality of the German bombing raids on Britain during the Second World War. This description will help to to get a sense of what the home front was really like and what the Official War Artists, such as Sutherland, had to respond to.

After this piece of writing, it goes into detail about Sutherland's contribution as a War Artist and what he did during this period of history. As well as this, there is also a huge range of pieces of art that Sutherland produced. When I looked through them, there was one image I was particualrly drawn to. It is called, "Devastation: City, East End Street" 1941. I find the use of extremely dark shades and the shadows of the piece demonstrates the destruction of the war and the mood of the scene very effectively.

This piece has given me a reminder of the fact that War Artists on the home front were not just recording the peace and tranquilty of which Britain was fighting to protect, such as the "Recording Britain" scheme, but they were also recording the terrible destruction of the bombing by German aircraft. This is another contrast in working style that I could refer to in my essay.