1939
- Artist: Hans Feibusch
- Date: 1939
- Medium: Oil paint on plywood
- Dimensions: support: 1524 x 914 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
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About this artwork
This is the “1939” by Hans Feibusch. Painted in 1939 on plywood, the work sits at the crossroads of a looming war and an artist’s own memories of conflict. Feibusch had fled Berlin after the Nazis seized power and settled in London, where he studied lithography and continued painting. In this piece he channels a deep unease that predates the outbreak of World II, a premonition of the suffering he expected.
The canvas holds three classically draped figures against an unnamed landscape. One figure lies dead, stiff and still, while a central man holds him up, his companion beside him, all three fixed in grief. The sculptural quality of the figures, the sharp contrast of light and shadow, and the absence of bright, exuberant colour signal a deliberate shift from the bold palettes he used in his earlier German years.
Feibusch once noted that this painting echoes “Resurrection,” completed four years later for an exhibition called *For Liberty*. Both works share an emotional intensity that hints at ecstasy or liberation, but “1939” leans heavily into mourning. Its raw, elegiac tone reflects his own wartime experiences and the personal loss of his brother, whose death in 1929 left a lasting imprint on his depiction of death’s rigidity.
In short, the painting is a haunting meditation on war’s cost, rendered with dramatic immediacy and a sculptural sense of form that invites viewers to feel the weight of grief.
See it in person
1939 is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
