Graham Sutherland in World War II

British painter Graham Sutherland (1903-1980), best known these days for a portrait of Churchill that Churchill hated and destroyed, spent World War II in the employ of the government, painting bomb damage and factories. Above, The City, a Fallen Lift Shaft, 1941.

Devastation: Burnt Paper Warehouse in the East End, 1941.

Devastation: An East End Street, 1941. It occurs to me that many of the modernist paintings I like depict war and other horrors. Almost as if the only thing modernism is good for is creating feelings of terror and woe.

But not entirely! I like this of Furnaces in Wales, 1944.

And Landscape with Red Sky, 1945.