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Shared Experience: Tocumwal - loading the train

Art and War

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Collection Item C1020615

Accession Number: ART92132

Yosl Bergner
Tocumwal - loading the train

oil on canvas
65 x 94.3cm

Along with other “friendly aliens” (refugees from Axis countries), Bergner was employed with No. 6 Employment Company, based at Tocumwal, in New South Wales. Drawing upon personal experience, he evokes a mood of dejection and exhaustion. The bleak palette of muted browns augments the atmosphere of gloom. The four anonymous figures, their bodies slumped dejectedly, have survived another day of endless loading and unloading goods trains as part of the war effort.

 

Paintings

  • The sleeping soldier
    Francis Lymburner
  • Battle of Arakan, 1943
    Anthony Gross
  • Recruit's Progress: Medical Inspection
    Carel Weight
  • Potato Peelers
    Leonard Brooks
  • Tocumwal - loading the train
    Yosl Bergner
  • Dream of the latrine sitter
    Sidney Nolan
  • Soldier
    Russell Drysdale
  • A Bofors Gun, Algiers
    Henry Carr
  • 2/10th Australian Commando Squadron: wash and clean up
    Ivor Hele
  • Smoko time with the AWLA
    Grace Taylor
  • Early Morning P.T.
    E.J. Hughes
  • CWAC Beauty Parlor #1
    Pegi Nicol MacLeod
  • Ballet of wind and rain
    Colin Colahan
  • Fatigue
    Ralph Walker
  • Crowds dancing, Kings Cross, Sydney
    Donald Friend

Last updated: 16 June 2021

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