DIE as in SOLDIER



My first "dying soldiers" poem dates from 1970 during the war in Vietnam. It was silkscreen printed in red and blue by Edition Noël at the California Institute of the Arts. In 1995 Edizione Francesco Conz in Verona printed a silkscreen version on canvas. This version I used as background surfaces for a series of eight war games, concluding with a "Kilroy was here" drawing, the ever-present and almost universal graffiti affirmation of World War II days. This series of paintings formed the centerpiece of an exhibition at the Berlinische Galerie in 1996 when the museum awarded me the first Hannah Höch Prize "for a lifetime of achievement in the arts."

(Reproduced courtesy of the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin.)