Stephen Cribari – a poet who teaches law in America - observations on Lesser-known Artists of the First World War

Stephen J Cribari’s poetry and plays have found their way into print and onto the theatrical and operatic stage in the United States and abroad.  In a parallel life he was a criminal defense attorney and law professor.  His coursework and commentary has ranged from evidence and criminal procedure to cultural property and the protection of art, artifacts, and cultural heritage.  He resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  His verse-novella "Still Life" is published by Lothrop Street Press.

As with little-known poets from WWI, what's our defining standard?  Little- known because died too young?  Little-known as an artist but happened to paint during, or in, the war? Well-known as an artist but painted only a little of the war?

Maybe it's the lawyer in me, or the sometime academic, but I think articulating a standard is important, not because it serves to include or exclude, but because it would spur us on to think about art, and to think about how we think about art.  And I think that's important because it gets us to think about ourselves.

Otto Dix (1891 - 1969)
Self Portrait

WWI art comprised a significant portion of one of my law courses.  Researching and preparing that material, I'd say that Dix, Beckman, Kirchner and Marc were major artists and seriously well-known war artists.  Check out some recent exhibitions at the Neue Gallery in New York City, devoted to Century German and Austrian art: https://www.neuegalerie.org/exhibitions/40

Similarly, Stanley Spencer, Isaac Rosenberg, Orpen, Nevinson, Nash might be considered well-known artists who painted the war, or well-known war artists.  Along with David Bombrerg, Nevinson and Nash might also be considered well-known artists generally.  Alfred Munnings is a seriously well-known artist, to whom the National Army Museum devoted an entire show just a few years ago.

Picasso and Rouault painted a bit of the war, and Renoir painted during the war but not of the war.  They would be considered well-known artists but at best lesser-known war artists.  Just as Yeats, despite his death of an airman poems, is not considered a WWI poet at all as he overtly refused to write poems about the war.

A postcard sent by Picasso to the
French poet Apollinaire in WW1

In the catalogues from the National Portrait Gallery's "The Great War in Portraits" and the Tate's "Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One" are many obscure, little-known artists but they might be considered well-known WWI artists.  And then there's someone like Victor Tardieu who painted the Duchess of Sutherland's field hospital and who, after the war, became a guiding light in Vietnamese painting.  A little-known war artist (no one would have known of his paintings until the Duchess's heirs sold them) who became a famous artist in southeast Asia but remained little known elsewhere!

Stephen Cribari