''War'' (German:''Der Krieg'') is the title of two oil paintings on the same theme completed in quick succession in 1896 by the Swiss Symbolist painter

Arnold Böcklin Arnold Böcklin (16 October 182716 January 1901) was a Swiss Symbolism (arts), Symbolist Painting, painter. His five versions of the ''Isle of the Dead (painting), Isle of the Dead'' inspired works by several late-Romantic composers. Biography ...

. The first version is in the collection of the

Galerie Neue Meister The (, ''New Masters Gallery'') in Dresden, Germany, displays around 300 paintings from the 19th century until today, including works from Otto Dix, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet. The gallery also exhibits a number of sculpture ...

, Dresden and the second, defined as unfinished, in the

Kunsthaus Zürich The Kunsthaus Zürich is an art museum in Zurich. It is the biggest art museum in Switzerland by area and houses one of the most important art collections in Switzerland, assembled over time by the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, a nonprofit art soc ...

in Switzerland. Painted when Böcklin was 69 and living in difficult circumstances in Italy, the pictures appear to express a disillusioned yet prophetic view of the future of mankind. They hark back in concept to

Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer ( , ;; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer or Duerer, was a German painter, Old master prin ...

's famous woodcut of '' The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse'' (c. 1497–98), based on the apocryphal . The first version depicts four riders, including War, Pestilence, and Death, riding furiously through the air above a classical city. In the second version the number of riders is simplified to three and the landscape replaced by a medieval town. Böcklin would revisit his vision of global plague in his painting '' Plague'', executed in 1898.

References

{{Arnold Böcklin 1896 paintings Paintings by Arnold Böcklin Paintings in the Galerie Neue Meister Paintings in the Kunsthaus Zürich Unfinished paintings War paintings Horses in art

See also

References