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The sower (Der Sämann) by Albin Egger-Lienz (1903)

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Art of War (33)

Der Namenlosen (1914) - Albin Egger-Leinz (1868-1926) [Austria]

Tempera on Linen [245cm x 476cm]

[Image Description. The painting depicts a herd of grotesquely drawn World War I German & Austrian-Hungarian soldiers. They are all doubled over in positions of the hard labor of war, as if digging with their weapons, while charging forward, ducked in pain, fear, and animalistic focus. They are unrecognizable, becoming their uniforms and weapons. Blood drips from their weapons, and their faces are a muddy sullen expression of the human face. They tread over a barren wavy land of dirt. End ID.]

Der Namenlosen means The Nameless Ones, and I don't think a better title could fit this painting. The young men who fought in World War I were experiencing a level of war that their world had never before seen, and they were the cannon fodder, the meat on the chopping block, and the sacrifices that old man demanded needed to be made, and for what? A war that destroyed their country, and the country of their neighbors.

Many of them would never be identified. By becoming soldiers they became numbers and warriors, nothing else in the eye of the storm. They all went from young men to killers operating off of the human nature to survive. Many never supported the war in the first place.

Albin Egger-Lienz, the painter to this piece, was born to a church painter father and peasant mother. He trained other his father to learn how to paint. He was called up for military service for the south Austrian Front on the side of Austria-Hungary, but he wasn't active as the average soldier, but instead a war painter in plainclothes.

In all reality Albin Egger-Lienz already had war experience, because he were a participant of the Tyrolean Rebellion of 1809. At first his art was patriotic of Austria-Hungary, and more so propaganda paintings, because he wasn't yet fully drafted into the war but all the more fascinated by it. As the war continued on the change in his mentality, and the mentality of those in Austria-Hungary reflected in his art.

He wrote about Der Namenlosen, "Gasping hardship of a person who is tested to the limits of his strength - it is 'the act' that one day will remind us and our grandchildren of the horrific whiff of our times."

This painting can now be seen in Vienna's Museum of Military History (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum – Militärhistorisches Institut)

Albin Egger-Lienz (Austrian, 1868-1926), Bergmäher - 1. Fassung [Mountain mowers - Version I], 1907. Oil on canvas, 94.3 × 149.7 cm. Leopold Museum, Vienna.

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