Label
2024, "Beyond the Iron Curtain: Visions from the Cold War"
This abstracted, expressive painting depicts a nuclear explosion in highly contrasting colors so bright they almost seem to battle each other for space on the canvas. Karl A. Menninger, a world-renowned psychiatrist and hobbyist painter during the later years of his life, commonly included this “warfare of colors” within his art. The subject matter of the painting is likely related to Menninger’s involvement in the anti-nuclear movement during the 1970s and 1980s. The small scale of the trees at the bottom of the canvas, contrasted with the vastness of the red and golden sky above, embodies the sense of fear and danger that instigated the anti-nuclear movement during the Cold War.
Text by Anna-Marie McIntyre, Washburn student