Uchida Takeo exhibited works with the Shinseisakuha Association (which later became the Shinseisaku Association) from its first exhibition, and mainly restricted himself to exhibiting with the group. Before the war, he had produced works based on ancient Japanese mythology, as well as the conditions brought about by the Machine Age and the disturbing social climate preceding the Second World War. However, most of those works were lost in the war. This painting was made after the war, reportedly with the intention of marking a new start as an artist. Its subject is the war orphans who then frequented Ueno Park in Tokyo, with nine children in various poses arranged in a vertical composition around the two who are wrestling. The title comes from Tokuda Shusei’s novel Shukuzu (Microcosm). The artist recalled seeing in the orphans’ resilience a “microcosm” of Japan’s future.
(KASHIWAGI Tomoh)
Uchida Takeo exhibited works with the Shinseisakuha Association (which later became the Shinseisaku Association) from its first exhibition, and mainly restricted himself to exhibiting with the group. Before the war, he had produced works based on ancient Japanese mythology, as well as the conditions brought about by the Machine Age and the disturbing social climate preceding the Second World War. However, most of those works were lost in the war. This painting was made after the war, reportedly with the intention of marking a new start as an artist. Its subject is the war orphans who then frequented Ueno Park in Tokyo, with nine children in various poses arranged in a vertical composition around the two who are wrestling. The title comes from Tokuda Shusei’s novel Shukuzu (Microcosm). The artist recalled seeing in the orphans’ resilience a “microcosm” of Japan’s future.
(KASHIWAGI Tomoh)