[Maruki Iri & Maruki Toshi] Hiroshima / Хиросима

Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1959. Preface by Mikhail Kotov.
Oblong 8vo. 16, [27] pp., ill.

The catalogue of the first solo exhibition in the USSR by any contemporary Japanese artist.

Maruki Toshi (丸木俊, 1912–2000) and Maruki Iri (丸木位里, 1901–1995) reached Hiroshima days after the bombing to help Iri’s surviving family, and two years later began the series of painted folding screens that became The Hiroshima Panels. American occupation censorship made showing the work at home difficult; by the late 1950s it was travelling internationally, and in 1953 the World Peace Council awarded them the International Peace Prize.

Contemporary Japanese art was almost unknown in the USSR — relations soured by 1930, Japanologists were repressed in the Purge, and cultural exchange stopped entirely during the war. In 1959 the Panels were hung in a pavilion in Gorky Park and then toured Soviet cities. The Marukis used their own connections afterwards to bring younger Japanese artists over and to enrich Soviet collections; after they left the Japanese Communist Party and visited the United States in 1970, their names were quietly restricted, mentioned only in connection with the Panels.

Binding & condition

Original wrappers and pictorial dust jacket. Good: light wear and minor losses to the jacket spine. An additional staple was inserted in error during binding.

Rarity

OCLC locates a single copy — Amherst College Library.