Kikuji Yamashita1919~1986 山下菊二

Yamashita Kikuji was a Western-style painter born in Tokushima Prefecture in 1919. After graduating from the Kagawa Prefectural School of Industrial Arts, he moved to Tokyo in 1938 and entered the painting studio of Fukuzawa Ichiro, where he absorbed the influence of Surrealists such as Dali and Ernst. After being conscripted and surviving the war, he helped found the Japan Art Association in 1946 and developed a strongly socially engaged stance through the avant-garde Zen'ei Bijutsu-kai. His 1953 masterpiece "The Tale of Akebono Village," based on a real act of rural violence in Yamanashi, fused surrealist imagery with sharp political indictment. He was deeply involved in social movements such as the Matsukawa and Sayama trials, and died in 1986.