For the Major General Emmett J. Bean Federal Center, artist Adam Cvijanovic creates a series of paintings titled Landscapes of Battle. Installed throughout the federal center’s extensive corridors, the work reflects the site’s long-standing connection to the U.S. military.

The paintings depict recognizable scenery from around the world—forests, deserts, fields, and shorelines. Rendered in meticulous detail, each image serves as a portrait of a specific time and place. Every landscape shown has been the site of a major battle or operation involving American armed forces over the past two and a half centuries.

Cvijanovic incorporates details tied to each location and event, including weather and time of day, to connect the landscapes to particular moments in military history. While the works represent battlefields, their absence of human presence imbues the scenes with a sense of timelessness. This openness invites reflection, interpretation, and personal meaning.

The artist explains: “These paintings are perhaps a portrayal of place before the battles, or perhaps they belong to some abstracted time after the fact. The artwork is meant to carry this ambiguity. It is meant to give the viewer what the viewer asks of it. On the one hand, providing an environment of beauty and calm for the hard-working people in this building and, on the other, marking and memorializing the sacrifices that American service members have made across the world over the span of our nation’s history.”