One of the most disturbing leaves from Francisco de Goya's already traumatizing partisan war series "Desastres de la Guerra" (The Horrors of War) is the one entitled "Que valor!" (What courage!) by the artist.

A woman can be seen firing a huge cannon at the enemy, who is not visible in the picture.

The French invading army has already raged terribly, however, as the woman, blacked out from the upper part of the body, only got up to the turret over a pile of fallen defenders.

Her long dress, unfit for war, identifies her as a civilian who was unexpectedly involved in the murderous events.

Stefan Trinks

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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It is Agustina de Aragon.

Her daring intervention and firing of the cannon at the invaders, when they already thought they would have an easy time of it after the defenders' complete low shot at the city gate, is said to have turned the tide of the siege of Zaragoza.

As in all Desastres paintings, however, Goya does not depict a naïve heroic apotheosis in this sheet either;

the path of this courageous defender literally leads over dead bodies.

Friends of Goya also died in the horrible war and specifically in the siege of his hometown of Zaragoza;

they could be in the macabre dead plinth.

In the past three weeks, many of the images of horror that Goya painfully timelessly fixed have returned.

But what particularly affects many viewers of these pictures is the dedication of everyone there, men and women, who does not shy away from any sacrifices.

Ukrainians are a people in arms, and many of those who do not wield weapons work "artfully" to defend their country and to use camouflage to protect against further bombardment.

The word "artful" might seem distasteful in view of the defense of bare life, were it not for Goya again, who shows how the Spaniards fight with all means to preserve their culture.

One read about sculptors in Lviv-Lemberg who create elaborate sculptures in times of peace, but now weld scrap metal, T-beams or rusty railway tracks together to form tank traps.

These "hedgehogs" each stand on the ground with three support legs and, as a result, and with their Corten steel look, appear like archaic primeval beings with three legs, like abstract sculptures.

Mark di Suvero's large welded iron sculpture on Berlin's Potsdamer Platz isn't much more elegant either, with the difference, of course, that it cost millions.

As close to nature as possible or flashy and colourful?

There are also many photos of Ukrainian women and young people working on huge camouflage nets.

In Lviv-Lviv, for example, not only civilians, but also students from the university and the art school have knotted camouflage nets for their defenders - from thousands of scraps of fabric.

In western Ukraine's Uzhgorod in the Zakarpattia Oblast, the set designers at the local theater – who are trained spacewalkers anyway – worked together with the town's residents and numerous refugees on conspicuously professional camouflage nets for huge areas.

Most of these camouflage nets are obviously inspired by the colors of nature, as they have been immortalized again and again in the naturalistic landscape paintings of Ukrainian artists, i.e. shades of green and brown, but also mauve.

The invention of these artistic camouflage, rather than just plain or field gray, dates back to World War I and the French painter Louis Guingot.

Guingot was not least inspired by Impressionism, so it is not surprising that his earliest camouflage jackets are bathed in shades of green-brown and pale yellow.

If you were standing in this army outfit in front of a life-size impressionist forest painting, where the sun filtered through the canopy dabs spots on the ground between the trees - you would become almost invisibly merged with the picture.