132cm x 112cm. Oil on primed board.
Based on Joe Rosenthal’s b/w photo. Phillip Carrero.
Raising the Flag at Iwo Jima is painted from a historic photograph taken on February 23, 1945, by Joe Rosenthal. It depicts five United States Marines and a United States Navy corpsman raising an American flag atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.
It won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography the same year it was published (the only photograph at the time ever to have done so), and even appeared on a commemorative US dollar in 1945. What few people know is that this inspiring moment was actually a second version of the original event.
On 23 February 1945, 2nd Battalion Commander Chandler Johnson was ordered to send a platoon to take the Japanese mountain of Suribachi. First Lieutenant Harold G Schrier was chosen to lead the platoon, and as they embarked, Johnson handed Schrier a small US flag which had been taken from the USS Missoula, and said, ‘If you get to the top, put it up.’ The Battle of Iwo Jima had seen some of the fiercest fighting of the Paci fic Campaign, and this was the final throe.
(exerpted from May 12, 2011 By George Clode)