"Soldier Stays" by Ralph Bakshi (2025)

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20 x 24 in. —

Acrylic and Charcoal on Canvas

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In Soldier Stays, Ralph Bakshi delivers a raw, unsettling figure forged in honest human vulnerability and contradiction. The central character looms beneath a red, multi-lensed helmet that feels both sensitive...and industrial—an otherworldly gas mask fused with the almost ancient alien. Swirling red paint evokes blood or pure life, suggesting either decay or hope, while the blacked-out eyes turn the figure into a full faced emissary of war pleading in its silence.

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The background, a thickly painted wash of turbulent blue-greens, underscores the psychological unrest of the piece, wavering between the blue skies of peace.. The brushwork is direct and layered, allowing the viewer to feel the painter’s urgency. The texture-heavy surface echoes Bakshi’s signature blend of animation and outsider art—a painterly quality that feels alive with movement and intensity.

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There’s a haunting resonance with contemporary artists like Anselm Kiefer, whose scorched, historical canvases confront trauma and memory, or Neo Rauch, whose surreal militarized figures exist in dreamlike, fractured realities. Yet Bakshi remains distinctly Bakshi—this isn’t abstraction for abstraction’s sake. His soldier is symbolic, personal, and accusatory.

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Soldier is not a glorification of war. It’s a scream, a caution, and a memory etched in pigment. The anonymity of the figure, its brutal gear, and its ambiguous form force us to question what survives in the aftermath—and who, if anyone, remains human.