- Artist
- Karl Weschke 1925–2005
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 1835 × 1525 mm
frame: 1908 × 1600 × 66 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by the artist 1994
- Reference
- T06894
Display caption
Weschke arrived in Britain as a German prisoner of war and for the last forty years has lived in Cornwall. This painting, based on the burning of the gorse on the moorland above the town of Zennor, shows smoke rising in a threatening, anthropomorphic mass. Painted at the height of the Vietnam war it evokes the barbarism suffered by successive generations. Weschke has drawn on his own memories of the Second World War, when the landscape would smoke for days after battle, while his image also suggests the bombing of Dresden and the burning of bodies in the death camps.
Gallery label, August 2004
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