Boy with a Bandaged Hand 包帯をした少年の像

Jiro Asazuma's artistic career started in abstract painting and later ended in pure abstraction, but in this particular period, he produced paintings that have figurative elements based on the human figure and the human body. We find a similar shift in style in Yoshishige Saito, who pursued abstract forms both before and after the war but underwent a period shortly after the war when he experimented in figurative expressions with human forms. These shifts were the results of the artists' struggle to find ways to cope with the utter atrocity of war. In this painting, a boy, with his life still ahead of him, is wounded and sits leaning on a desk with his face covered with his hand, turning his back to the door in the lighter background which is suggestively half open. The lighting from the back, used also in many of Asazuma's other works from this period, including "Prayer" (1950) and "Boy in Backlight" (1951) shown at his one-man show at Takemiya Gallery under Shuzo Takiguchi's direction, creates a sense of anxiety. But a subtle humor characteristic to this artist is also present in this picture, and makes it a work to reflect the emotions of the period when hope and anxiety coexisted.