Invocation

The present work is from a series begun in the 1930s as a direct statement against the rise of Fascism in Europe (see also lots 47, 48 and 51). John Armstrong observed Fascism in Italy and like his contemporaries, was deeply tormented by the Spanish Civil War. Here, Armstrong projects an image of decay by means of depicting the remains of a building and paper peeling off the wall. The peeling paper, fragments of an Egyptian figure, perhaps stand as an indication and symbol of the permanent cultural destruction on Spain inflicted and employed by General Francisco Franco. Armstrong was equally almost certainly influenced by both Vincent Korda's sets for the film Things to Come that were depicted with precision but tended to be subtle rather than shocking, and de Chirico's paintings. Armstrong was commissioned as an official war artist a year after Britain declared war on Germany, designed a cover for a leaflet in the 1945 election campaign and contributed occasional articles and poetry to left wing journals. He became an ardent campaigner against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and in his painting Victory, which attracted the judging committee of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1958, he depicted an imagined result of a nuclear holocaust. The twentieth century was rich in images of horror and destruction to which Armstrong brought with his artistic output a 'magical realism'.