1st Stage: Shock / Disbelief

Fritz Brandtner was a pioneer of modernism in Canada who believed art had the power to express both “the good and evil in life.” After surviving the trenches of the First World War and four years as a prisoner of war, he had witnessed hell on earth. Yet rather than letting bitterness consume him, he channeled his experience into his work as an artist and teacher, eventually moving to Canada, where he used his art to advocate for democracy while warning against the dangers of nationalism and materialism.

In this striking linocut, Brandtner captures a fundamental truth about anger in the aftermath of trauma. A towering angelic figure looms over a burning city while wrapping its hands around the neck of what seems to be a demon. The flames rise in violent red slashes, and indifferent to the dagger stuck on its wing. Yet the angel’s posture suggests something more complex than pure rage, a wrestling with the impulse to destroy what has been built.

A justified anger, where flashbacks and triggers place us one glance away from chaos. Brandtner understood that integration doesn’t erase what happened; part of our identity remains shaped by horror. The image asks: when we have every right to burn it all down, to take hold of evil and strangle it, what keeps us from crossing that line?

The answer lies in the artist’s choice to create rather than destroy. Like rocks that separate a turbulent ocean from solid land, Brandtner draws a boundary, not to suppress his anger, but to give it form and meaning. The angel hovers above the flames but does not add to them. This is anger that acknowledges its power while choosing another path, transforming wrath into witness, chaos into creation.