Immediately after graduating from Tokyo School of Fine Arts (now Tokyo University of the Arts) in 1939, Hamada Chimei enlisted in the army in his hometown of Kumamoto and began military service in China the following year. After being discharged for a time, he was recalled in 1944 and saw out the end of the war while on Niijima, one of the Izu islands. For Hamada, his career as an artist began with this experience of war. The artist later said of this work that he completed it in a single day based on a memory of seeing “a corpse lying in front of a Chinese house, with maggots swarming out of the wound on its arm.” He added depictions of a head, corpses, and a child with a swollen abdomen to the actual scene he had witnessed. The work’s undertone of dark gray is perhaps a reflection of the darkness and despair of war that was so deeply etched in the artist’s heart. (KATADA Yuko)
Immediately after graduating from Tokyo School of Fine Arts (now Tokyo University of the Arts) in 1939, Hamada Chimei enlisted in the army in his hometown of Kumamoto and began military service in China the following year. After being discharged for a time, he was recalled in 1944 and saw out the end of the war while on Niijima, one of the Izu islands. For Hamada, his career as an artist began with this experience of war. The artist later said of this work that he completed it in a single day based on a memory of seeing “a corpse lying in front of a Chinese house, with maggots swarming out of the wound on its arm.” He added depictions of a head, corpses, and a child with a swollen abdomen to the actual scene he had witnessed. The work’s undertone of dark gray is perhaps a reflection of the darkness and despair of war that was so deeply etched in the artist’s heart.
(KATADA Yuko)