Living in Berlin from 1913 to 1915, American artist Marsden Hartley experienced the militaristic pageantry and spectacle of the outbreak of World War I, aspects for which he claimed to have a childish wonderment. He was confronted with the sober reality of war when his twenty-four-year-old love, Prussian lieutenant Karl Von Freyburg, died in battle in 1914, and a dear friend, Von Freyburg’s cousin, was seriously wounded. 

Abstraction (Military Symbols) is part of a fourteen-painting series that Hartley produced between 1914 and 1915 dedicated to these men. He expressed his emotions in the paintings by using a personal vocabulary of symbols. Hartley simplifies and distorts the banners, flags, and emblems to create powerful, decorative patterns and dynamic, pulsating rhythms that convey his intense response to military displays.

Marsden Hartley (American, 1877–1943), Abstraction (Military Symbols). Oil on canvas, 1914–15. 39 1/4 × 32 in. (99.7 × 81.3 cm). Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1980.1013.