From the Ancient Times (II) 

In 1952, Nakajima Kiyoshi became a lecturer at Tokyo University of the Arts, and often took his students to the neighboring Tokyo National Museum to practice making copies of paintings. The motifs seen in his From the Ancient Times No. 1 and No. 2 are the Kofun period (3rd to 6th centuries AD) haniwa clay figures and earthenware that they would have seen exhibited at the time. In the 1952 edition of the Japan Art Institute Exhibition, which Kiyoshi had participated in since before the war, the influence of new painting from Europe and the United States was evident in a remarkably pronounced tendency to express abstract space using color, rather than the more traditional motifs and methods of Nihonga (modern Japanese-style painting). Kiyoshi’s work also reflects this trend. In his diary, he notes that he struggled to create impactful motifs without relying on depth of field. His choice of ancient relics as a motif also reflects the boom in archaeology that occurred after the end of World War II as Japan reassessed its view of history.
(UCHIYAMA Junko)