Drawing D-Day

Drawing D-Day: An Artist's Journey Through War offers an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind testimony in words and images by a soldier and artist who participated in one of the most famous military operations of World War II.

On June 6, 1944, Ugo Giannini landed on Omaha Beach with a platoon of military police assigned to accompany the U.S. Army's 29th Infantry Division. Only six of the thirty-seven men in the platoon made it to the beach. Told that he was needed on the bluff above the shore, Ugo climbed the Verville Draw, jumped into a crater made by naval bombardment, and spent that day and part of the next as an eyewitness to the invasion.

Remarkably, he began to draw. These are the only known drawings from that historic day. Drawn in pencil and pen, in a gritty, realist style, the images depict heavily burdened infantrymen trying to stay afloat in seawater, crawling on the beach, and dead among the ruins of a bombed-out village.

The illustrations, interwoven with Ugo's letters to his family and girlfriend, portray the horror of war in a deep and personal way. Abstract paintings at the end of the book, composed forty years later, make a powerful statement of the enduring power about war on an artist-soldier's psyche.

About the Author

Ugo Giannini studied at the National Academy of Design in New York. His education was interrupted by WWII, during which he served with the Army's 29th Infantry Division and was among the first wave of soldiers to land on Omaha Beach on D-Day. After the war, he continued his studies at the Art Students League in New York, as well as with Fernand Leger in Paris, and he taught art at Caldwell College in New Jersey.