London's Burning Life, Death and Art in the Second World War

During the First World War, the most important British works of art inspired by war were the poems and paintings of young artists whose lives were at risk in battle. During the Second World War, when the Blitz made civilians in London and elsewhere almost as vulnerable as those at the front, it could be argued that the greatest artistic achievements were by civilian artists. This book examines, from a historical and cultural perspective, the rich outpouring of art in Great Britain during the war years. It does this through a close study of the lives and wartime work of the sculptor Henry Moore, the documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings, and the composer Benjamin Britten. It was difficult for Henry Moore, already an established sculptor, to continue his work under wartime conditions. Supported by the War Artists Advisory Committee, he was commissioned to do a series of drawings of people in bomb shelters, most often the underground stations of London. These masterly works, at once eternal and ofthe moment, vividly evoked the determination of the British people to endure, and to preserve their humane values. Toward the end of the war, building on these drawings and in his first return to sculpture, Moore created what the authors consider his masterpiece, the Madonna and Child in St. Matthew's Church, Northampton. Many other artists were supported by the War Artists Advisory Committee, and the authors briefly examine the work of Paul Nash, who created what may be the single greatest British painting of the war, Totes Meer (Dead Sea), and Graham Sutherland, with his grim bombscapes - stark and semi-abstract depictions of the dreadful damage suffered by the City of London. Fires WereStarted, a recreated documentary film of the Blitz directed by Humphrey Jennings, related with quiet humanity the story of 24 hours in the life of a fire-fighting group. Without naming the enemy, it provided a rich sense of the vStansky, Peter is the author of 'London's Burning Life, Death and Art in the Second World War' with ISBN 9780804723404 and ISBN 0804723400.