In this haunting image Felixmuller shows a young soldier, driven to insanity through unending nightmares of conflict, his face a twisted mask of pain.  Many young men returned from war with mental as well as physical scars, alienated from friends…

Title page from Der Bildermann 1, No. 18 (1916), verso Weihnacht by August Gaul. Give us Peace, (Dona Nobis Pacem), from the Agnus Dei in the Latin mass.  Printed in the Christmas issue, a sorrowing Madonna ‘clothed with the sun’ floats high above…

Kubin produced this work possibly in response to the horrors of the First World War and its devastating consequences for thousands of young men. A struggling man is restrained by others whilst an excited barking dog looks on. A distant figure…

Plate 12 from ‘Visions’, 1916-17. The view through an open doorway reveals warlike nations in prayer, yet in fact enemies. Various costumes represent the different countries present. Above the bowed, kneeling figures is a bank of clouds upon which…

The Brücke artists often holidayed together in the summer, sketching their models from life outdoors, in the woods or on the beach. Although produced after Pechstein’s expulsion from Die Brücke in 1912, this work symbolises an important Brücke…

War is depicted as a massive giant poised above a mountain of skeletons, ending life with a sledgehammer blow. Barlach’s title looks back to the medieval theme ‘A Dance of Death’ in which living and dead both join a procession or dance, portraying…

Title page of Der Bildermann 1, No. 14 (1916), verso Wenns so weiter geht... by August Gaul. Barlach wrote in his diary: “Today I sent a drawing to Der Bildermann - Christ is led by the Devil on to a mountain and shown the kingdoms of the world and…

From the illustrated book Deutsche Graphiker der Gegenwart (German Printmakers of Our Time), 1918 (published 1920). Both Campendonk and his friend Franz Marc portrayed humans and animals in harmony with each other and nature, in an evocative,…

The taut, attenuated forms of this self-portrait and the pulsating lines coming from the sky reflect the oppressiveness and strain of the war years. The composition has been compared to Munch’s lithograph of The Scream of 1895 where the…

Slevogt was commissioned as a war artist, but, instead of producing a folio of morale raising propaganda, he produced a universal condemnation of war after returning from the front, which was condemned and censored by the authorities. He produced a…