top of page

From Picasso to Mudariki: 6 Artists Who Shaped the Memory of War.

Updated: Jun 23

by artWeb


On June 22, 2025, U.S. forces launched coordinated strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, employing B‑2 bombers and Tomahawk missiles in what President Trump hailed as a “very successful” mission. The move, part of broader Israel -Iran -U.S. escalations in early June, raised global alarms over a possible wider regional war.


War continues to prompt profound artistic reflection. Below are 6 artists in global artistic history whose work echoes wars, reminding us that every bomb drop resounds in visual form.


Pablo Picasso (1937) Guernica, oil on canvas,  (Collection of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía)
Pablo Picasso (1937) Guernica, oil on canvas, (Collection of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía)

1. Pablo Picasso (Spain) – Guernica (1937)

Created in response to the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, Picasso’s monumental black-and-white painting is one of the most iconic anti-war artworks in history. With its distorted figures and howling animals, Guernica captures the chaos and horror of civilian suffering, becoming a universal symbol against the brutality of war.




Salvador Dali (1940), The Face of War (Collection of  Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam)
Salvador Dali (1940), The Face of War (Collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam)


2. Salvador Dalí (Spain)The Face of War (1940)

Painted during World War II, The Face of War shows a ghoulish, skull-like face filled with screaming mouths inside its eyes and mouth, an endless recursion of suffering. Surrounded by serpents and set in a desert wasteland, the painting is a timeless vision of war’s psychological terror. Today, as the threat of wider war looms after the U.S. strikes, Dalí’s work captures the paranoia, trauma, and cyclical despair that conflict leaves behind.





Roy Lichtenstein, Acrylic paint and oil paint on canvas (Tate Collection)
Roy Lichtenstein, Acrylic paint and oil paint on canvas (Tate Collection)

3. Roy Lichtenstein (USA) – Whaam! (1963)

Lichtenstein turned war into pop. Using comic book imagery, Whaam! mimics mass-media depictions of violence, complete with onomatopoeic explosions and fighter jets. While seemingly playful, Lichtenstein’s work is a critique of how American culture stylized and sanitized warfare during the Cold War and Vietnam era.





Richard Mudariki, 2024, Hondo (war)
Richard Mudariki, 2024, Hondo (war)

4. Richard Mudariki (Zimbabwe) – Hondo (War) (2024)


Mudariki's work starkly portrays the devastation of modern conflict, from a mother’s anguished scream over her dead child to lifeless bodies being dragged from the rubble. Mudariki reinterprets the infamous "Whaam!" sound from Lichtenstein’s comic-style art, blending it with the visceral realities of missile strikes in Ukraine and Palestine. Through these layered references, he connects past and present conflicts, underscoring the cyclical nature of human suffering.ar Series: Beachhead



1947

Jacob Lawerence (19470 ) War Series: Beachhead (Whitney Museum Collection)
Jacob Lawerence (19470 ) War Series: Beachhead (Whitney Museum Collection)

19475. Jacob Lawrence (USA)War Series (1946–47)

Lawrence chronicled the emotional and psychological experience of war from a Black soldier’s point of view. His sharp, geometric compositions depict exhaustion, reflection, and survival - the interior war within the warrior.




Paul Nash (1918), We are making a New world,  711 x 914mm (Imperial War Museum Collection)
Paul Nash (1918), We are making a New world,  711 x 914mm (Imperial War Museum Collection)

6. Paul Nash (UK)We Are Making a New World (1918)

Nash’s haunting WWI painting, with its broken trees and scorched earth, sarcastically titles the devastation as progress. It’s an eerily fitting image as B‑2 bombers reshape landscapes once again in Iran.


Comentários


© 2024 artweb

bottom of page