George Bellows, Art and Atrocity Crimes

This afternoon I visited the exhibition of works by George Bellows at the Royal Academy of Art in London. An American artist during the first few decades of the twentieth century, Bellows is well-known for his paintings of boxing matches. Today I learned that he was an artist who was greatly concerned about a range of issues that fit squarely within the frame of human rights. Several of his works on human rights themes, including atrocity in wartime, capital punishment and lynching, are on display at the Royal Academy of Art.
There is a series of large canvasses dealing with atrocities perpetrated during the invasion and occupation of Belgium by Germany during the First World War. One of them shows a young man having his hands chopped off.

 

There is a dramatic lithograph entitled 'electrocution'.

There are also two slightly different versions of a print showing the lynching of an African-American entitled 'The Law is Too Slow'.