This self-portrait was made three months after the end of the war. The artist later said that it “captured a youth who, despite his dark daily life as a victim, fought and escaped death by accident, and who amongst chaos around his 25th birthday sensed an intense light.” At the time, in his twenties, Hyodo Kazuo repeatedly made self-portraits and wrote of his frustration at not being able to capture the reflection he saw in the mirror, saying, “I feel frustrated, like I’m in a bread-eating competition but the bread just won’t go down.” About 60 years later, he painted １Double Image: Self-portrait at Eighty-three, Standing on a Hill in a Postwar Harbor Town, in which his now-old self is seen standing alongside himself in his twenties. In the painting we can sense his fierce determination to not sit around idly in his old age, but to reinvigorate the passion of his youth, when he hungered for answers.
(UCHIYAMA Junko)
This self-portrait was made three months after the end of the war. The artist later said that it “captured a youth who, despite his dark daily life as a victim, fought and escaped death by accident, and who amongst chaos around his 25th birthday sensed an intense light.” At the time, in his twenties, Hyodo Kazuo repeatedly made self-portraits and wrote of his frustration at not being able to capture the reflection he saw in the mirror, saying, “I feel frustrated, like I’m in a bread-eating competition but the bread just won’t go down.” About 60 years later, he painted １Double Image: Self-portrait at Eighty-three, Standing on a Hill in a Postwar Harbor Town, in which his now-old self is seen standing alongside himself in his twenties. In the painting we can sense his fierce determination to not sit around idly in his old age, but to reinvigorate the passion of his youth, when he hungered for answers.
(UCHIYAMA Junko)