George Eastman Museum

In a recent interview with his daughter Gabriella, Chiarenza had this to say about his series The Peace Warriors of Two Thousand and Three: Well, the most obvious set of work I did that was directly impacted by what was going on in the world was during the war in Iraq , and I was very upset about what was going on there—I always had trouble with wars—so I started a series of pictures which ended up being called, “The Peace Warriors of 2003.” They were still abstractions made out of collages, but with some reference to military people and equipment and stuff, and fortunately, Nazraeli Press thought that was an interesting idea and decided to publish a portfolio book of that material. And that’s one of the very few times where I made references from abstraction to reality—“reality.” But I was so upset with that war that that motivated me to make those pictures. Source: Gabriella Chiarenza Interview (December 20, 2019)