The Guardians of Geidai
Pencil on paper, 23x26cm, 2007

My university (Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music=Known as Tokyo Geidai) started in just 120 years ago and as showing its history, the school has more than twenty of statues of past professors in campus. All of them were built before WWII and it is almost miracle that we have bronse statues before the war time today because during the war, the evil government collected all metal things from all over the country to melt them and produce planes, ships and gun shots. Just like others, my school was asked to offer the statues too. But people told the government that those statues were extraordinaly precious objects in the point of art and also very good teaching materials for the students. And amazingly, the government didn't take over the statues, or, simply forget about them(war makers are always stupid, you know).

Today, there's almost nobody who pays atention for those statues of professors but I drew only four of them as my guardians of art.


...The middle two weren't painters but sculptors though!
The far left and far right were the most important western/oil painters and who establish the base of Geidai, Fujishima Takeji and Yasui Sohtaroh.