During the war Gualtiero Passani suffered through deportation to an Austrian concentration camp. As a result of this experience, in addition to writing a number of stories and poems, he described in many of his art works the events of the war  that he witnessed. Mainly these are watercolors, pencil drawings, ink and charcoal. In all of these, shades of gray prevail, as though to emphasize the suffering and the atmosphere of oppression that hovered at that time. The subjects include scenes from combat; shootings; views from the trenches; death and destruction. In the period just after the war, his work maintained the descriptive realism of the bloody scenes which he had witnessed over the years as the memories of that dark period resurfaced; and the artist often included characters from the military world in his work; ridiculing them with grotesque figures, intent on carrying out paradoxical actions bordering a bitter comedy,  in order to denounce the uselessness of violence and war.