Tatsuo Ikeda, Creator of Disquieting Works About the Toll of War, Has Died at 92

ARTNEWS 

By Claire Selvin

Tatsuo Ikeda, LOVE, 1955, ink on paper. © TATSUO IKEDA/COURTESY THE ECONOMOU COLLECTION, ATHENS

Tatsuo Ikeda, who created intricate, otherworldly drawings informed by his experiences during World War II, died in November at age 92. The news was announced by Ikeda’s gallery, Fergus McCaffrey, which has locations in New York, Tokyo, and St. Barth. Ikeda’s early drawings from the early 1950s, which are rendered in black-and-white and muted colors, reflected the artist’s anti-war perspective. They depict strange, threatening creatures alluding to the atrocities of war and the corrupting powers of nationalism. Born in Saga Prefecture, Japan, in 1928, the artist was selected as a kamikaze pilot in 1943, though he was not sent on a suicide flight before the end of World War II. [More]