Graham Sutherland (1903-1980), Triple-tiered Landscape (1944)
“Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.” – For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
Graham Sutherland, most known for his imaginative landscapes and portraits, was one of the leading British modern artists of his time. He was commissioned during World War Two as an official war artist and painted a variety of different works on the subject. This specific landscape portrays a very surreal and almost bleak outlook on the world. The use of various forms of mediums brings a sense of chaos into the work, which accurately parallels the devastation and destruction that was occurring at the time; not even something as simple as a field was safe from the reality of war.
