Title: XI Mother and Child (eleventh of the series, Hiroshima Panels)
Creator: Maruki Toshi, Maruki Iri
Date: 1959
Culture: Japanese
Materials: Sumi ink, pigment, glue, charcoal or conté on paper
Dimensions: 180 cm × 720 cm
Repository: Maruki Gallery
“Parents were forced to abandon children pinned under fallen houses, children abandoned parents, husbands abandoned wives and wives husbands, all in frantic flight from the blaze. This was reality at the time of the atomic bomb.
Still, in the midst of this, many witnessed the miraculous sight of children who survived, held tightly in their dead mothers’ arms.” (Maruki Gallery)
This painting focuses on the struggle of abandonment during the bombing. Some people had to flee from the person they loved most, just for a slim chance of survival, others refused to leave the side of their loved ones and endure the flames together.
The painting shows sparing use of color with the flames. The clouds of smoke depicted act as shadows over the people’s faces, completely stripping them of their identities. The off-white section in the middle is being closed in on by these clouds of smoke on either side, indicating the impending flames and death.
I am drawn to woman close to the center. We see the titular subject of a mother and her child completely engulfed in the flames. The painting is filled with people in agony crawling for their lives, while she looks at peace. As we see from the reading, miraculously, some children survived this event while their parent did not. There is a sort of inexplicable safety blanket of love and it appears the mother is at peace knowing she is saving her child.
The paintings mostly convey this expanse of grotesque death and agony, and while this one does depict that, there appears to be more hope in this painting than the others. The mother and her child represent a love that persists through even horrible tragedy and death.
References: Maruki Gallery, https://marukigallery.jp/en/hiroshimapanels/
