Shared Experience: Art and War

British Prisoners of War, Italy

Paul Bullard
British Prisoners of War, Italy
oil on canvas
51.4 x 76.4cm
IWM ART 16315

The interior of this prisoner-of-war hut is filled with wooden framed bunk beds. Bullard was captured and held as a prisoner of war in Italy. His composition captures a strategy of stubborn coping and restless waiting in a constrained life. The apparently endless machine-like structure of the bunk beds is broken and subverted with draped laundry and flailing arms; the steep perspective offering a vanishing point, an illusion of escape.