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Ikeda Tatsuo 池田龍雄
Untitled (Fisherman) 無題（漁夫）
circa 1953
Ikeda Tatsuo’s Untitled (Fisherman) shows a lone crouching figure preparing a meal in a dark, cobwebbed kitchen. Filled to the paper’s edges, the rectangular drawing highlights a tight space rendered in muted tones and the artist’s characteristic ink and pencil lines. The work belongs to a series of mixed-media drawings from the early 1950s, during which an increased social consciousness was developing in Japan. Tatsuo focused his drawings on the country’s proletariat and the new modes of living that emerged in the transitional period after the Second World War. The subdued palette, flattened forms, and unconventional use of perspective in the drawing recall the works of social realist Käthe Kollwitz and Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco—all of whom wielded an important influence in the 1950s Japanese art scene. Despite the destitute settings and the downtrodden subjects in Tatsuo’s paintings, there is a warm humanism and dignity in his characters, which give a visual voice to the labourers, peasants, and farmers in post-war Japan.
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