Shared Experience: Central Square, Tobruk
Art and War
One of the few works that Hele completed in North Africa, this work was painted only days after Tobruk was captured by the Australian forces from the Italians. When a German and Italian offensive later forced Commonwealth forces to retreat from most of Libya, Tobruk became surrounded. The besieged town was held tenaciously by the so-called “Rats of Tobruk” for eight months in 1941, until the Axis siege was broken by a Commonwealth offensive.
Paintings
- Battle of Britain
Paul Nash - Burma - 14th Army: the battle of the Sittang Bend. Men of the Queen's Own (Royal West Kent) Regiment making an armed patrol
Leslie Cole - HMS Ark Royal in Action
Eric Ravilious - A Parachute Bomb
Matvyn Wright - Before Zero Hour
Alex Colville - Greece
Lyndon Dadswell - H.M.A.S. Perth fights to the last, 28th February, 1942
Murray Griffin - Night Target, Germany
Miller Brittain - Night Air Raid
Charles Comfort - Light Coastal Forces Blow Up An Enemy Merchantman
Richard Eurich - Wreckage On Beach Near Newhaven, England
Michael Forster - A Crater in the Naval Dockyard, Hong Kong
Leonard Rosoman - Submarine Pens At Brest
Michael Forster - Desolate plantations, Balikpapan
Donald Friend - Shattered Landscape, Cleve
Alex Colville - Central Square, Tobruk
Ivor Hele - Wrecked ME 210
Charles Comfort - Home Again
Miller Brittain - Troops in back of truck, Libya
Ivor Hele - Hitler Line
Charles Comfort