Artwork Details
- Title
- Potsdam Meeting
- Artist
- Date
- ca. 1945
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 37 1⁄2 x 28 1⁄2 in. (95.4 x 72.4 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift of the Harmon Foundation
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- oil on paperboard
- Classifications
- Keywords
- Figure group
- Portrait male — Atlee, Clement — full length
- Portrait male — Truman, Harry — full length
- Object — other — flag
- Portrait male — Stalin, Joseph — full length
- History — United States — Potsdam Conference
- Object Number
- 1967.59.655
Artwork Description
Johnson presented the image of three world leaders--U.S. President Harry Truman (center), Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin (right), and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee (left) --joining hands in victory and standing on a Nazi flag. The three met in Potsdam, Germany, in July and early August 1945 to discuss the terms of the peace after Germany's surrender on May 8. When leaders of the three countries had met in Yalta the previous February, they began laying out terms of a postwar peace. But the cast of characters at Potsdam was new. Truman replaced Franklin Roosevelt, who had died in April, and Attlee replaced Churchill midway through the meeting when the results of his recent landslide victory were announced. But much was still at stake. Although Germany had surrendered, the conflict in Asia continued. Just days after the Potsdam meeting, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. After a second bomb decimated Nagasaki, the war in the Pacific ended.
Exhibitions
