Thursday, December 10, 2009

Chimei Hamada’s works collected by Uffizi Gallery: No.4

The fourth work is Elegy for a New Conscript, which was made by etching and aquatint in 1952.



The wall in the rear is the site the artist really stood on, which was about 5 or 6 maters high. He didn’t look at the execution on his own, but he heard about it from a veteran soldier and made this work based on the episode, he says in a catalog published by Kumamoto Prefectural Museum of Art.

There are some people in the back who are indifferent to the gibbeted head. Even we the people who don’t have any experience of war firsthand, can get how tragic war is, which makes people insane.