British Modernists and the Images of the First World War 1914–1920

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of modernist perception of the situation of mechanized war, as young British artists adapted the latest forms and concepts in wartime works. The First World War was not like previous military clashes. The increased role of technology in the process of hostilities created the impression of the impersonality of the war, the soldiers were perceived as a part of a large machine that claimed millions of lives. British modernists, faced with a new military reality, were looking for suitable possibilities of modernist art in order to convey the broken, like geometric abstraction, “machine” character of war, taking away lifes, blowing up the earth, crushing equipment and airplanes. Artists understood that the time heroic realism and allegories has passed; the war, deprived of a human face, going on with the participation of a large number of equipment, required other means of artistic display – broken lines and geometric shapes, contrasting colors.