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People are rediscovering the greatest American artist from World War Ihttps://www.businessinsider.in/people-are-rediscovering-the-greatest-american-artist-from-world-war-i/wilsons-dreamlike-painting-of-marines-at-bois-de-belleau-shows-the-beginning-of-one-of-the-deadliest-battles-in-the-history-of-the-corps-/slidelist/57301970.cms2017-02-23T03:26:13+05:30

People are rediscovering the greatest American artist from World War I

Feb 23, 2017, 03:26 IST

Wilson's dreamlike painting of Marines at Bois de Belleau shows the beginning of one of the deadliest battles in the history of the Corps.

Wilson himself was gassed during the battle and found himself stranded in no man's land for three days. Here's his painting of another shell-shocked soldier.

Another work from Bois de Belleau shows wounded French troops retreating.

Wilson's works are hard to categorize. This painting of an explosion resembles abstract expressionism, but it's grounded in reality by the poor figures in the corner.

Wilson often painted exaggerated facial expressions, drawing inspiration from traditional Japanese art and theater—as in this painting of a German grenadier shocked as a concussive force shatters the tree in front of him.

Critics have pointed to works like "Front Line Stuff" as "pure cinema."

Other works were theatrical, like an "Encounter in the Darkness" framed by the ruins of a farmhouse.

Some works showed the bleak absurdity of war, like the "Dance of Death" of German soldiers caught in barbed wire.

Wilson was in his early 30s when he joined the Marines. Before that, he had studied with modernists in New York and Paris and taught at Columbia University's progressive Teachers College.

Wilson's battlefield works, notes the catalogue, are "harrowing and sometimes hallucinatory watercolors that call attention to the loneliness and despair of soldiers on the front lines ... [that] depicted his former adversaries, German foot soldiers, as fellow victims of the collective insanity of war."

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