Claude Buck (1890-1974),
War Protest, c.1945, oil on panel, 59 3/4 x 41 3/4 inches. Brigham Young University Museum of Art, gift of Leslie Buck, 1978.
Claude Buck painted War Protest near the end of World War II. Rather than celebrating the end of violence, this image questions whether a war’s outcome can ever be considered a success. The destroyed landscape full of deathly figures seems to stretch on forever, as a bleak reminder of war’s constant presence in human history. War Protest is currently on display in Becoming America.