The Philadelphia Museum of Art commemorates the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with the exhibition 'Boom: Art and Design in the 1940s'. It explores the dual nature of the decade, featuring over 250 artworks linked to wartime experiences and post-war innovation. Highlights include wartime fashion, impactful designs from interned Japanese American artists, and post-war abstract art. Key pieces like Bourke-White's wartime photograph and Schiaparelli's innovative designs embody the era's complexity, showcasing both devastation and subsequent artistic growth.
One section will include art connected to the war, such as a never-before displayed front-line photograph by Margaret Bourke-White, Air Raid over the Kremlin (1941), in which Moscow's Red Square is lit up with bombs, gunfire and flares.
Wartime fashion will be explored too, from the conflict's impact on Parisian designers to a post-war return to opulent couture.
Boom will also highlight achievements in post-war design, such as the work of the Japanese American artists George Nakashima and Isamu Noguchi who were held in internment camps by the US government during the war.
The exhibition will end with works from the late 1940s, such as abstract canvases by Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, and Pablo Picasso's The Dove (1949), which was used as an aspirational emblem for unity.
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