Children of War 1970

Mixed media 20 x 27 cm (7 9/10 x 10 3/5 in)

Perhaps Tale’s subtle application of distortion, or the ‘grotesque’, to use another term, in the portrayal of mental anguish is used to even more poignant depths in Children of War. If the viewer firstly observes the manner in which the facial features of each child is depicted a clearer understanding of the artist’s ability to convey feelings and ideas through drawing may be gained. In this work the sparing, and therefore all the more effective, use of the deftly charged pen-stroke is highlighted.

The features of the girl on the left – head and nose twisted unnaturally, by lines in both brush and pen, convey the terrified aversion felt by the child to the sight of the stricken, maybe dead, horizontal female figure. Yet the girl’s left eye is transfixed by the horrors of the sight. This particular eye is further emphasised by the subtlety distorted pen strokes of the eyebrow which convey more evidence of the traumatic effect of the situation on the girl’s mind. Additional pen strokes describe the girl’s distorted arms, defensively positioned across her body and legs, rooted in petrification.

The smaller child, huddled in the middle presents a contrasting understanding of the grim situation. The tilted head and widely spaced eyes in a face, animal-like in its vulnerability gaze in dumb helplessness. Heavily accented by pen strokes the skull-like features of the child in the centre supporting the woman - his Mother perhaps – portray ravaged grief and despair. The dark sockets where the eyes should be, the darkest areas in the entire drawing, seem to ‘lock’ the viewer’s gaze.

That the children are very small can be understood by the length of the adult figure, whose features remain hidden, lying in the lap of the central child. They seem to be in a darkened building where a shaft of light seems to highlight the rather eerie stillness, punctuated only by the life-less swaying of the woman’s legs. This darkness, if it is more closely examined, contains many diverse types of energy of a distinctly raw and urgent character - strokes, lines, unidentifiable forms, an ominously oozing and coagulating mass underneath the prostrate body – all redolent of unease and tension, making an important contribution to the work’s meaning yet remaining subordinate to the subject of the drawing.

The subject of violent war, the reduction of the image to its essence, the almost similar size, the use of sepia and black, is in some ways reminiscent of Goya’s series of etchings Los Desastres de la guerra – for example Yo lo vi, ‘I saw it’ , where a Mother, baby in arms tries to pull her screaming elder child away from a scene of barbaric brutality. As Goya, Tale creates an illusion in the service of truth. While the two works are executed in a very different manner perhaps what the two artists share is the power and strength of their expression. By his restrained and entirely distinctive use of emblem in ‘grotesque’ form, as noted above, and concentration on the ‘inner trauma’ of the mind, Tale creates a compelling and universal requiem to the profound suffering of the mute.

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