Early life Ikeda Tatsuo was born in
Imari,
Saga prefecture on August 15, 1928, as the eldest son of a stonemason. As a young witness to the escalation of imperial aggression and militarist ideology through the 1930s and early 40s, Ikeda's early education was heavily shaped by the nationalist sentiments that colored the atmosphere of the era. The end of the war left Ikeda with a sense of traumatic disillusionment, and he described his sentiments during this period as follows: "Young people had grown up being fed the lesson that sacrifice for the country and becoming a god enshrined at Yasukuni [i.e., dying in the war] was the road to eternal righteousness. We were all hurtling down that road with no time to think. When the road suddenly cut off, it led to great sorrow and confusion.” Ikeda gained admission to the Tama Art and Design School (now
Tama Art University) with the painting as part of his portfolio, and moved to
Tokyo in 1948 to begin his studies.
Move to Tokyo and career beginnings Though he had originally enrolled with the intention of studying oil painting, Ikeda quickly lost interest in
academism and instead began to immerse himself in Tokyo's avant-garde circles. Ikeda also explored the conditions and ramifications of postwar urban development through work such as
Big Street (Odori) (1954), where he used expressive, child-like hand to draw houses, arrows and stick figures in haphazard array, alluding to the mass development and land reclamation practices that left many at the margins in impoverished living conditions, even a decade after the war. This insistence on moving out of the studio space and engaging directly with the sociopolitical issues of the postwar milieu would form the core of the methodology driving the Reportage movement. Alongside fellow left-wing artists such as
Hiroshi Nakamura,
Kikuji Yamashita, and Shigeo Ishii, Ikeda began producing a rich series of protest work that sharply critiqued the conservative cabinet that rose to power following the occupation and the ongoing violence incurred by the perpetuation of American military presence, endemic corruption, and the escalation of the nuclear arms race. Combining elements of both realism and surrealism, the works often mobilize satire, allegorical imagery, and the aesthetics of the grotesque to express in vivid form the perils and anxiety of the postwar social condition.
Seisakusha Kondankai (Producers' Workshop) In 1955, Ikeda and film critic Sanpei Kasu formed the Seisakusha Kondankai (Producers' Workshop), which grew out of the dissolution of Seibiren. == Select exhibitions ==