Shared Experience: Central Square, Tobruk

Collection Item C178426

Accession Number: ART22865

Ivor Hele
Central Square, Tobruk
oil, black pencil on canvas on hardboard
48.1 x 57.8cm

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

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