Ceri Richards 1903-1971

Painted in 1944, Desolation (Devastated Landscape) appears at first glance to present the viewer with a damning indictment of war. The contorted foreground figure juxtaposed with the violently decapitated statue and the ruined building resembling St Paul's refer unmistakeably to a state of affairs in which violence, destruction and chaos reign. However, a closer reading of Richards' war-time work, particularly that produced between 1944-5, reveals a more constructive attitude. From an atmosphere of confusion and instability, Richards saw the possibility for a positive and vigorous artistic response. As Mel Gooding has explained, Ceri Richards' interpretation of the war was 'an extreme manifestation of natural processes' (Mel Gooding, Ceri Richards, Cameron & Hollis, Moffat, 2002, p.66.). His concern lay not so much with the consequences of war but in the cyclical forces that drive war. These he equated not only to Nature's own forces of destruction/ decomposition and creation/ regeneration, but also to the notion of human artistic creativity. These ideas he had already explored in The Sculptor’s Landscape (Homage to Henry Moore) (1943, Private Collection) in which the image of his friend Moore is found metamorphosed into the rock. As Gooding explains, 'The figure in dynamic metamorphosis - becoming rock or plant, hidden in the elemental, emergent from chaos - was to become an essential motif in Richards' great paintings of 1944-45' (ibid., p.65). The overriding significance of Desolation (Devastated Landscape) becomes therefore not simply one of despair in the midst of confusion and waste, but that of new creative forms arising out of destructive chaos.