Postcards from the Trenches

German artist Otto Schubert was 23 when he was drafted into the Great War. As the conflict unfolded, he sent a series of hand-painted postcards from the trenches to his sweetheart Irma in Dresden. Amidst the terrible slaughters he endured during the battles of Ypres and Verdun, he filled dozens of army-regulation 4 x 6 cards with exquisite paintings of the daily realities and tragedies of the war. Vivid and poignant, these images provide a soldiers view of the Great War, humanizing and personalizing one of historys most brutal conflicts.

Postcards from the Trenches is both a visual war diary and a love story between a soldier-artist and his wife-to-be, offering a deeply moving portrait of life on the Western Front.
Schuberts postcards illuminate the personal landscape of war, and bear powerful witness to the conflict. Beautifully and powerfully illustrated with full-color reproductions of Schuberts hand-painted postcards, as well as series of visceral black and white lithographs, the book reveals the work of one of the degenerate artists condemned by Hitler and provides a groundbreaking insight into the largely unknown paintings of a rising star on the pre-War German art scene.