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Giant anti-war work rediscovered
06/06/2005 12:22 - (SA)
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| The central part of the world's largest mural Myth of Tomorrow, painted by Japanese contemporary artist Taro Okamoto in Mexico, is displayed at a press conference in Tokyo. (Jiji Press, AFP) |
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Tokyo - The largest mural by leading Japanese modern artist Taro Okamoto, an abstract anti-war work, has been discovered in Mexico 35 years after it disappeared and will go on display in Japan.
"Myth of Tomorrow," which is 5.5m high and 30m long, represents the moment at which an atomic bomb explodes.
"Okamoto believed that the myths of the future develop at moments of cruelty and tragedy. This mural speaks from his deepest thoughts, from his heart," the Taro Okamoto Memorial Foundation for the Promotion of Contemporary Art said in a statement Monday.
Japan is the only country that has suffered a nuclear attack, with the United States dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
The mural was originally painted for a hotel lobby in Mexico City in the late 1960s and is considered a companion piece to his "Taiyo no To," or "Tower of the Sun," which featured at the Osaka World Exposition in 1970.
But the developer of the hotel fell into financial difficulties and the hotel was never finished. The mural was removed and eventually vanished.
The painting was discovered in 2003 in a yard for building materials in a suburb of Mexico City, and Toshiko Okamoto, the partner of the painter who died in 1996, went to Mexico to confirm the long-lost work.
After the foundation obtained the rights of possession earlier this year, it sent a technical team to Mexico to dismantle the mural and pack it for shipment to Japan.
The painting will be restored from July and shown to the general public at the end of next year at the earliest.
- AFP
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