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Ikeda Tatsuo 池田龍雄
Untitled (Man at Oven) 無題（火爐旁的男人）
1953
Ikeda Tatsuo’s Untitled (Man at Oven) features a lone figure keeping a watchful eye over a furnace—perhaps one used to heat homes by burning wood. Tatsuo’s characteristic ink and pencil lines render the grim scene in a monochromatic palette. 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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