Alex Colville

Alex Colville (born August 24 1920 in Toronto, Ontario) was a Canadian war artist during World War II, recording in pencil sketches and paintings what he saw on the battlefields. Many of these images depict trench warfare, broken war machines and death, experiences which are said to have heavily influenced his later works which have been called anxious, minimalist, surreal and existential. His painting "Horse and Train" (1954), was inspired by two lines from the poet Roy Campbell "Against a regiment I oppose a brain And a dark horse against an armored train."