5 Artists Who Became Soldiers During the First World War

One of the most devastating conflicts in history, the First World War saw a number of artists enlist as soldiers. Painters and sculptors found themselves on the front lines, trading canvases for soldier’s gear and experiencing war firsthand. Their biographies reveal how deeply the war marked an entire generation.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner never fought, as he volunteered to serve as a driver in order to avoid being drafted into a more dangerous role. However, after suffering panic attacks and due to issues with his mental health, he was soon declared unfit for service and was sent away to recover. Self-Portrait was painted during that recovery. It shows him with an amputated hand, wearing a military uniform despite being in a studio. In this way, Kirchner tried to face his fear of impotency as an artist, a soldier, and a man.

Egon Schiele

In 1915, artist Egon Schiele went to war. He survived the fights but lost his battle with influenza, which took over Europe after the war and killed more people than the war itself. The 28-year-old Schiele and his wife Edith were two of its approximately 40 million victims.

The Futurists

The Futurists declared war in The Futurist Manifesto as “the world’s only hygiene”. Because of such extreme views, many of the Futurists enlisted in the army when Italy joined the war in 1915. Two of them lost their lives: Umberto Boccioni was wounded and died in 1915, and Antonio Sant’Elia died in the battle of Monfalcone at the age of 28 in 1916. Meanwhile, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was scarred by his experiences fighting in the mountains of the Trentino region, and he was severely wounded in 1917.

Otto Dix

Dix’s series of war images is one of the most poignant depictions of the disasters of the First World War. He executed these prints between 1923 and 1924 in a technique of etching and aquatint, in which acid etches a metal printing plate—this heightens the visual effect of decay and degradation of the post-battle landscapes. Otto Dix experienced the horrors firsthand; he served as a machine gunner from 1914 to 1918 and saw combat on both the Eastern and Western fronts.

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

This French sculptor and painter lived and worked in Britain, where he shared the radical modernist views of his friends, the Vorticists—Ezra Pound and Jacob Epstein. When the war began, he joined the French army and was so brave in combat that he received a decoration for bravery before being killed in the trenches at Neuville-Saint-Vaast at the age of 23. His lover Sophie Brzeska became distraught after his death and died in an asylum in 1925.