THE LAST WASHINGTON PAINTING
(PREMONITIONS OF THE CORPORATE WARS)
54" x 102" | oil on canvas | 1980
The Last Washington Painting was painted in the winter of 1979 by Alan Sonneman while he was living in a studio at 11th and K st., NW in Washington, D. C. It depicts the infamous image of the atomic bomb test “Operation Crossroads” at Bikini Atoll in 1946 imposed upon the skyline of our nation's capitol as seen from the southern approach to the 14th Street Bridge with the Washington Monument at the center of the explosion. Painted in the waning day of the Cold War when the official policy of the United States Government was referred to as MAD (mutually assured destruction), it became the iconic image of the Nuclear Disarmament Movement in the 1980s.
The painting was first exhibited at the Washington Project for the Arts on March 3rd, 1980 to wide acclaim. At that time it was featured on the front page of the Washington Post’s Style section three times as well as twice in the Washington Star and many other publications. In 1981 it appeared in the exhibition, “Crimes of Compassion” at the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia. In 1982 it was seen again at Norse Gallery, Washington D.C. for the exhibition “Premonitions of the Corporate Wars” and concurrently reproduced as a poster for an anti-nuclear rally in Central Park in New York City that drew a quarter million people. The painting was featured on the cover and a two-page centerfold in 1984 for Common Cause Magazine.
After being held in a private collection for the intervening years, it reappeared in 2010 to be featured in an exhibition for the 35th Anniversary of the WPA at the Katzen Art Center at American University in Washington, D.C., a survey of the historic alternative exhibition space. Having lost track of its whereabouts, a search was undertaken to find it which was chronicled in a cover story in the Washington City Paper in July 2010.and once again received extensive coverage. Consequently, “The Last Washington Painting” has become one of the most recognized paintings in our Nation’s Capitol in the last 50 years