The second item is Elegy for a New Conscript: Sentinel. This one was made in 1951 by etching and aquatint. This is a piece of the series “Elegy for a New Conscript” that has its basis on his experiment of war.
A posted sentinel holding a rifle, a soldier hanging himself in the skull-shaped background and a harsh scene in the daytime are expressed like a montage in the work.
The tension, fear, solitude and a sense of hopelessness of the soldiers who are on the border between life and death perpetually are vividly depicted by the skull-shaped background, the large weird tree, darkness, birds and so on. In these kinds of expressions, we can find a crescent moon in darkness and a mad wall lit up by the moon in a surreal and beautiful way, which is a further attraction of Chimei Hamada.
