1970

Kent State

English, 1922 - 2011

In 1970, Munich publisher Dorothea Leonhart invited Richard Hamilton to produce a print in a huge edition of several thousand impressions. Strongly against America's involvement in Vietnam, Hamilton decided to take advantage of the broad reach of this mass edition and chose his subject to create an indictment of the war. Kent State shows a fallen student who was wounded in the controversial 1970 altercation between the National Guard and anti-Vietnam-War demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio. Four other students were killed in the incident. Hamilton, one of the most inventive artists to incorporate photographic imagery in his work, created this print from a still photograph taken of a television screen during a BBC broadcast of the tragic event.