We are Making a New World
We are Making a New World is a 1918 oil-on-canvas painting by Paul Nash. The optimistic title contrasts with Nash's depiction of a scarred landscape created by the First World War, with shell-holes, mounds of earth, and leafless tree trunks. Perhaps Nash's first major painting and his most famous work, it has been described as one of the best British paintings of the 20th century, and has been compared to Picasso's Guernica.
The work was among the first oil paintings produced by Nash. It was based on his 1918 pen-and-ink drawing Sunrise, Inverness Copse, which depicts the remains of a small group of trees at Inverness Copse, near Ypres in Belgium. Both works were exhibited in a solo exhibition entitled "The Void of War" at the Leicester Galleries in May 1918.
The painting measures 71.1 × 91.4 centimetres (28.0 × 36.0 in). It depicts a bright white sun rising above ruddy brown clouds, shining beams down on a desolated green landscape below, with unnatural mounds of earth piled up between the skeletal remains of blasted trees. Nash's style is developed from Cubism and Vorticism.
References
- We are Making a New World, Imperial War Museum
- Sunrise, Inverness Copse, Imperial War Museum
- Private view: Paul Nash, Prospect magazine, March 19, 2010
- We are Making a New World, 1918, Google Cultural Institute