Exhibition Theme - Captivity

British prisoners of war, Italy 1946

The interior of a prisoner-of-war hut filled with wooden framed bunk-beds. Paul 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.

Oil on canvas 51.4 x 76.4 cm
Painted in England, 1946, from a sketch made in Sforzacosta, Italy, 1943-44
Imperial War Museum ART 16315

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