Painted in 1947, just after World War II, this work shows Japanese artist Toshi Maruki (丸木俊) at a turning point, soon to begin the anti-war collaborations with her husband Iri Maruki (丸木位里) that became the Hiroshima Panels (原爆の図 or Genbaku no zu). Trained in Western oil painting, she uses a plain pose to ask how an artist can speak about devastation. In this taut self-portrait, the Japanese woman painter appears cropped at the thighs before a storm of grey and black brushstrokes. She wears a flat black cap, a rust-orange smock over a white shirt, and looks straight toward us with steady, amber-brown eyes in a light-to-medium skin tone. Her right hand rises to cover her mouth, fingers pressed over parted lips as if holding back words. In her other hand (to our right), she grips a thin paintbrush, its pale tip catching the light beside her face. Thick, scraped paint makes the orange garment and background visibly rough, so she feels both solid and vulnerable, almost swallowed by the swirling dark around her. The hand over her mouth suggests censorship and the pressure to remain quiet, while the slim brush she lifts becomes a fragile tool of witness. The swirls of grey paint read as smoke, ash, or rough water, echoing the unsettled mood of occupied Japan. Later retrospectives treat this canvas as a starting point of a woman artist insisting that her own body, doubt, and determination belong inside the history she would help to expose.

自画像 (Self-Portrait) by 丸木俊 / Toshi Maruki (Japanese) – Oil on canvas / 1947 – The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (Japan) #WomenInArt #art #artText #BlueskyArt #ToshiMaruki #丸木俊 #Maruki #JapaneseArt #SelfPortrait #MOMAT #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #NationalMuseumofModernArt #東京国立近代美術館