Art at IWM

Brothers Sydney and Richard Carline were employed as official war artists by the Imperial War Museum during the First World War, each tasked with documenting aerial warfare. Between 1918 and 1920, the brothers produced dozens of artworks recording views over the Western Front, the Italian Front and the Middle East.

On 18 March 1915, a powerful naval force of British and French ships failed spectacularly in an attempt to force its way through the Dardanelles and threaten the Turkish capital, Constantinople (Istanbul). A decision was therefore taken to supress the Dardanelles defences by landing soldiers on the Gallipoli peninsula before making another attempt.

The first British official war artists’ scheme was set up by the government in 1916. Although several female artists were approached either by the British War Memorials Committee or the Ministry of Information, none of them completed commissions for the official schemes.

As the Battle of Britain raged in the skies over Britain in the summer of 1940, a range of British artists were quick to record and interpret this vital event. Their work was commissioned or purchased by the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC), the body that oversaw the British official war art scheme of the Second World War.

See 10 of the works selected by IWM for evacuation to safety before the start of the Second World War. 

Edward Ardizzone (1900 - 1979) is one of the most enduringly popular of the artists commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC) in the Second World War, as well as being one of the longest serving. 

Since the mid 1970s IWM has collected and commissioned contemporary artists' personal, political and conceptual responses to conflict. This has resulted in a diverse and challenging collection of artwork, the highlights of which are brought together in a new book, Art from Contemporary Conflict.

IWM worked with six Royal Academicians to reveal how the IWM collections influence and impact their work. Looking at objects as diverse as aircraft to sound trumpets, and themes such as imprisonment, surveillance, terrorism and the nuclear threat of the 1960s, the resultant films demonstrate the breadth and vitality of the collection and the wide-ranging fascination it holds for artists working today.

Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps began working together under the name kennardphillipps in 2002, collaborating to produce art that responded to the build up to and aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.