This painting belongs to Xanti Schawinsky’s part of career in the U.S.A. 

During this period, he teaches at Black Mountain and at the same time works along Laszlo Moholy Nagy on camouflage for US army vestuary (interesting as camouflage is also a theme of investigation in his idea of theater). In addition he starts to experiment with the concept of composing faces with war machines, cannons and tanks - the series is called Faces of war and can be paralleled to Arcimboldo in the way the totality of face lineaments are rendered through the juxtaposition of different elements distinguishable on their own. (see the second picture for comparison).

In this period, which evolves around 1942, it is interesting to see this special work that Xanti Schawinsky produced: if one hand the Faces of war series has Arcimboldean traits, here the result is more political and has little in common - in terms of style - with the compositions of the series. The other faces of war as a matter of fact reflect more on the term of the machinery that originates this new kind of war, even more dehumanizing due to the new technologies of war \[Curzio Malaparte in his book Kaputt describes an interesting parallel between the “smells of the old war” (blood, carcasses and corpses) and the “smells of the new war” (steel, coal, metal ruins)\]. Here instead the artist chose to study the idea of war faces differently, starting from propaganda and from these three well recognizable figures.

Even if this is a painting I think it still embodies the graphical qualities of Schawinsky in being a great communicator through his imagery: a clear political stance on the three ideological faces of the war, putting them all on the same level: Adolf Hitler, Josip Stalin and Benito Mussolini, all sharing the same grin above the swords of the war. Propaganda through visual language, through art, and a clear message on how despite ideologies might differ, the swords at the front are those of the people whose face unfortunately doesn’t stay in history.

XANTI SCHAWINSKY - THREE GREEN WAR FACES, 1942