Olin Dows “World War II: the European Theater”
William Holman Gallery
This event has ended.
William Holman Gallery presents its second season with an exhibition of the World War II Watercolors, Drawings and Photographs of Olin Dows, Technical Sergeant 1st Class, a decorated veteran who served in the European Theater of Operations from 1942 until the end of World War II in May, 1945. This very personal archive from the artist’s estate reveals an emotive journey in images from deployment, through training in England, D-Day and then Dows’ front line march from Normandy through Paris and Bastogne to Torgau, Germany on the Elbe River, 70 miles from Berlin.
The exhibition includes over 60 watercolors and drawings which recorded army life both in and out of battle - from basic training exercises at Fort Meade, Maryland to refugees carrying their belongings through devastated cities and towns immediately following Allied liberation. These works are supplemented by Dows’ remarkable collection of photographs, taken in battles and in camps across Europe. The exhibition is a part of Dows’ impressive archive, which includes more than 800 photographs, drawings and watercolors, as well as his personal journals, correspondence and sketches recording one man’s experience of the War. The archive also includes many works returned to Dows by the Department of the Army after 1946, and is complemented by the Dows’ works that remain in the Archives of the Army, as well as the Roosevelt and Truman Presidential Libraries in Hyde Park (Dows’ home) and Missouri.
The journey across Europe was epic for Dows, who carried a rifle and a camera as well as his watercolors and charcoals. Dows’ work begins in the training camps of the west of England, and on bivouac. Many of these were used by the Army for formal exhibitions in London and in the US War Department, while his raw photographs and terrain sketches after D-day were employed daily by commanders on the battlefield for reconnaissance.
The Continental Europe work moves through the 270 days of fighting beginning with the “Battle of the Hedgerows” at St. Lô in Normandy, to the liberation of Paris, the brutal winter at Bastogne in Belgium and campaigns through Metz and the Ruhr Valley into Germany. Dows documented the 35th Infantry Division after D-Day and was with them from June to September 1944. In late August 1944, we have photographs of Dows in the studio of Pablo Picasso in Paris at the Liberation. Three months later he was assigned to 101st Airborne and spent the winter recording the “Battle of the Bulge” at Bastogne.
On the drive across France to the Elbe in March-April, 1945, we know Dows was present at the liberation of Buchenwald in early April, 1945 from which no work, except two photographs, has survived in this collection. Dows was present at the historic meeting of American and Soviet Forces at Torgau on the Elbe River on April 25, 1945 recording this celebration in several watercolors, as well as many photographs.
Decorated with a Bronze Star for bravery, Dows was instrumental in the surrender of a large group of German Regular Army soldiers without an engagement using his very good German to talk them into laying down their arms. Dows was discharged from the Army in August, 1945 and returned to his home and studio in Rhinebeck, New York.
Media
Schedule
from September 08, 2013 to September 30, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-09-12 from 18:00 to 20:00