Nuclear art was an artistic approach developed by some artists and painters, after the bombings of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki is the capital and the largest Cities of Japan, city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. It became the sole Nanban trade, port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hi ...

Conception and origins

In the days, weeks and years following the atomic bombing of Japan, trained and untrained artists who survived the bombings began documenting their experiences in artworks. The U.S. occupation authorities controlled the release of photographs and film footage of these events, while photographers and artists on the ground continued to produce visual representations of the effects of nuclear warfare. Photographer Yōsuke Yamahata began taking photographs of Nagasaki on August 10, 1945 (the day after the bombing), however his photographs were not released to the public until 1952 when the magazine '' Asahi Gurafu'' published them.

Historical nuclear art in Italy

In 1948, the artistic movement of Eaismo published a manifesto illustrating some aspects of the

atomic age The Atomic Age, also known as the Atomic Era, is the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear weapon, The Gadget at the ''Trinity'' test in New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, during World War II. Although nuclear chain reaction ...

and, at the same time, criticizing the industrial use of

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced ...

.G.Favati, V.Fontani, M.Landi, A.Neri, A.S.Pellegrini, Manifesto dell'Eaismo, Società Editrice Italiana, Livorno, 1948 It was a movement of poetry and painting, founded by the Italian artist Voltolino Fontani, aiming to balance the role of men in a society upset by the danger of

nuclear radiation Ionizing radiation (or ionising radiation), including nuclear radiation, consists of subatomic particles or electromagnetic waves that have sufficient energy to ionize atoms or molecules by detaching electrons from them. Some particles can travel ...

. The artistic group was strengthened by the poet Marcello Landi and by the literary critic Guido Favati. In 1948 Voltolino Fontani depicted the disintegration and fragmentation of an

atom Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. Every solid, liquid, gas, ...

on canvas, by creating the artwork: ''Dinamica di assestamento e mancata stasi''. In 1951 the painters

Enrico Baj Enrico Baj (October 31, 1924 – June 15, 2003)June 15 according to the Guardian, June 17 according to the-artists.org was an Italian artist and writer on art. Many of his works show an obsession with nuclear war. He created prints, sculptur ...

and Sergio Dangelo created the , criticizing and putting the repetitiveness of painting (as an artistic and commercial phenomenon) in discussion.Luciano Caramel, Arte in Italia, 1945-1960, Vita e Pensiero,

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

1994 Plenty of Italian artists, in

and

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

, and foreigners like

Yves Klein Yves Klein (; 28 April 1928 – 6 June 1962) was a French artist and an important figure in post-war European art. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein w ...

Asger Jorn Asger Oluf Jorn (3 March 1914 – 1 May 1973) was a Danish painter, sculptor, ceramic artist, and author. He was a founding member of the avant-garde movement COBRA and the Situationist International. He was born in Vejrum, in the northwest c ...

, Arman, Antonio Saura joined the movement. The main representative of the arte nucleare movement was

Piero Manzoni Piero Manzoni di Chiosca e Poggiolo, better known as Piero Manzoni (July 13, 1933 – February 6, 1963) was an Italian artist best known for his ironic approach to avant-garde art. Often compared to the work of Yves Klein, his own work antici ...

, who in this context, for the first time in his life, put his talent in evidence. Unlike Eaismo, recommending artists to pursue painting values (and poetry), the arte nucleare movement tried to promote a new form of art in which painting was marginalized.

Historical nuclear art in Spain

In the meantime, Spanish painter

Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in ...

published the Mystical manifesto (1951), putting Catholic mysticism and nuclear themes together. In this period Dalì created artworks like Idillio atomico (1945) and

Leda Atomica ''Leda Atomica'' is a 1949 painting by Salvador Dalí. The picture depicts Leda, the mythological queen of Sparta, with the swan. Leda is a frontal portrait of Dalí's wife, Gala, who is seated on a pedestal with a swan suspended behind and to he ...

(1949).

Historical nuclear art in France

In 1949 the French artist Bernard Lorjou started to paint his monumental artwork “l’age atomique” (The atomic age). The painting was concluded after one year and is now located in the

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

Historical nuclear art in the United States

The painter and photographer

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910–1983) was an American self-taught artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Over the course of fifty years, from the 1930s until his death in 1983, Von Bruenchenhein produced an expansive oeuvre of poetry, photography, pain ...

painted the artwork “Atomic age” in 1955, and other apocalyptical and post apocalyptical paintings up to 1965. The British sculptor Henry Moore created a bronze public sculpture entitled

Nuclear Energy (sculpture) ''Nuclear Energy'' (1964–1966) (LH 526) is a bronze sculpture by Henry Moore on the campus of the University of Chicago at the site of the world's first nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile-1. The first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reactio ...

(1967), which both depicted the fatality of nuclear weapons and celebrated the invention of nuclear energy for use as electrical power. The sculpture is located on the grounds of the University of Chicago, where the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction was produced at the Chicago Pile-1, under the oversight of the Manhattan Project and Enrico Fermi. The sculpture is in the form of a hybrid

mushroom cloud A mushroom cloud is a distinctive mushroom-shaped flammagenitus cloud of debris, smoke and usually condensed water vapor resulting from a large explosion. The effect is most commonly associated with a nuclear explosion, but any sufficiently ener ...

and human skull.

Contemporary approaches to nuclear art

Japan

After the March 2011 accident that caused three nuclear reactors to melt down at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan, there have been numerous responses by contemporary Japanese artists, including Shigenobu Yoshida,

Tatsuo Miyajima is a Japanese sculptor and installation artist who lives in Moriya, in Ibaraki prefecture, Japan. His work frequently employs digital LED counters and is primarily concerned with the function and significance of time and space, especially withi ...

, Shimpei Takeda,

Fuyuki Yamakawa Fuyuki Yamakawa (山川冬樹) (born 1973) is a performance artist, sound artist and musician who lives in Yokohama and Tokyo, Japan. Early life and education Yamakawa was born in London where his father was an anchor and correspondent for Fuji T ...

, Iri and Toshi Maruki, and Hiroshima bomb survivor, Tadasi Tonoshiki. In 2015 an exhibition was organized in the Fukushima exclusion zone, "Don't Follow the Wind" by curator, Kenji Kubota, that includes the work of 12 international artists.

North America

The cultural critic, Akira Mizuta Lippit, has written that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the most significant photographic and cinematic event of the 20th Century. There have been numerous exhibitions of photographic works, including the 2015 show, Camera Atomica, at the Art Gallery of Ontario, exhibiting two hundred works.

References

Bibliography

* E.Baj, S.Dangelo, Manifeste de peinture nucleaire,

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

, 1952, in T. Sauvage, Pittura italiana del dopoguerra, Scwwarz Editore,

, 1998. *Martina Corgnati, Il Movimento nucleare arte a Milano, edizioni Credito Artigiano,

, 1998. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Nuclear Art Art movements Nuclear warfare