George Bellows at Georgia Museum of Art

Saturday, 18 March 2006 12:53

Athens, GA- Let Loose Upon Innocence: George Bellows and World War, a small, scholarly exhibition built around the opportunity presented by a loan from the Audrey Love Charitable Foundation of George Bellows’s painting The Return of the Useless , will be on view at the Georgia Museum of Art from May 20 through July 30, 2006. In 1918, Bellows produced a series of paintings, drawings and lithographs as a response to World War I and the reports of German atrocities in Belgium. The Return of the Useless depicts a group of Belgians being returned to their homeland after their German captors had rejected them as no longer fit to work for the war effort. At the time, American artists rarely confronted the horrors of war, instead focusing on the heroic qualities of soldiers and generals in battle. Bellows’s depictions of the atrocities reflected the influence of many European artists, including the Spanish Romantic painter, Francisco Goya y Lucientes. Goya’s Disasters of War, painted in response to Napoleonic France’s invasion of Spain in 1808, documents the horrors of that particular conflict and contains themes similar to Bellows’s work more than 100 years later. Bellows was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1882 and studied at The New York School of Art, earning popularity and recognition through sales and awards. An admitted socialist, Bellows contributed free illustrations to the left-wing journal The Masses as an avenue to challenge inequalities in the American racial and class structures of the time.It was his dedication to speak out against injustice that ultimately led to his works dealing with World War I. The exhibition includes the loan of The Return of the Useless, as well as several works from the Georgia Museum of Art’s permanent collection. It also brings together as many of Bellows’s War series and related work as possible. Let Loose Upon Innocence will feature five of the seven war subject paintings he created in 1918, including both works featuring “Peace.” This exhibition is generously sponsored by the W. Newton Morris Charitable Foundation and the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art. Visit The Georgia Museum of Art.

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