Art Appreciation: Powerful Images: The Art of World War Two

Timed to coincide with VE Day, this extended session explores how artists across the world responded to the unprecedented upheaval of the Second World War. Through painting, drawing, photography, and graphic art, creatives bore witness to a global conflict that reshaped nations and lives. Their works captured the brutality of battle, the endurance of civilians, and the psychological toll of war—sometimes as official records, sometimes as deeply personal responses.

We begin by examining how art was shaped and constrained under totalitarian regimes, from Nazi Germany to Stalinist Russia. Artists faced censorship, persecution, or forced complicity, as regimes co-opted visual culture to serve ideology. Yet even within these strict controls, some artists found ways to subvert, critique, or survive through their work.

The second part focuses on Britain’s official war artists, commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee to document life during wartime. From bombed cities to military operations and factory life, these artists produced a remarkable visual record—one that blended realism with personal interpretation, often revealing as much about morale and memory as about the events themselves.

Finally, we explore the extraordinary work of artists who were refugees, exiles, or prisoners in camps—those who risked everything to create images as acts of resistance, identity, and survival.