Artwork Created During WWII

During WWII, a lot of artwork was created at home and at the war front. Below are some examples of pieces created during that time period.


This painting is entitled Leaving Home, created by Richard M. Gibney. Gibney was a United States Marine Corps artist. He was drafted into the Marines when the US entered WWII. He was a part of the Marine Art Program, traveled with the men, and saw and recorded through his paintings many scenes of combat. Leaving Home depicts his feelings and those of other young men when they were first sent to war. It portrays the tragic feelings of leaving home and going to an unknown place to fight. He shows what it was like at the beginning of the war for Americans who had to fight.


Created on the WWII war front, this painting was made by Private Ed Reep, a US Army Artist. It is entitled The Morning After and shows the horrors of death and war. On a personal level for Reep, it depicts a morning after a lot of his friends were killed by a German bomb. In sadness he stated about his work, "I painted these men with dazed looks, and clouds up above that seemed to reach like a dragon, like in the Goya's Disasters of War. Everything seemed to be tragic, terrible and meaningless(www.pbs.org). In all, this painting and all of Reep's paintings represent the truly ugly face of war and the conditions on the fronts.


Dorothea Lange was a famous photographer during the Great Depression in the United States. During WWII, she was commissioned to photograph Japanese internment camps, the neighborhoods and other aspects of their journey and lives in the camps. She was hired by the War Relocation Authority, and was extremely shocked by the racism and the conditions of the camps that she witnessed. As a result, her photographs show the harsh realities for Japanese Americans during that time. The photo above, entitled An Early Comer, is one of these photographs from that time. Not surprisingly, when they first came out, the photographs were censored because of the harsh realities they pictured, but today they honestly depict the conditions and injustices of the camps. It has been stated that Lange's photographs are "documents of such a high order that they convey the feelings of the victims as well as the facts of the crime"(www.loc.gov).


Like the other artists and works described so far, this painting was created by a serviceman during WWII. It is entitled Garden at Hiroshima, Autumn and was painted by Commander Standish Backus, Jr. Backus reported for active duty in 1941 and in May 1945 was ordered to document naval operations in the Pacific as a military artist. He was a part of the Fourth Marine Regiment and was present for the entry into Tokyo Bay and Japan's surrender ceremonies. Backus' work portrays images from that time in the War in the Pacific. Specifically, Garden at Hiroshima, Autumn, depicts the state Hiroshima was in a month after the dropping of the atomic bomb.