Objects

The scene here shows the execution of men, probably in a camp. Celnikier built his composition on a multidirectional arrangement of straight lines and contrasts between three vertical zones. Two of them, asymmetrical in terms of the area they occupy, are concentrated groups of figures: prisoners being shot (on the right) and soldiers executing them. The empty, almost vertical isthmus between them is the shooting zone. The artist has intensified the expression by confronting the different directional lines – diagonal and vertical in the zone of victims, and horizontal (rifles) in the zone of the executioners | AT