Yasuo Sum - Japanese Avant-garde Art

"Yasuo Sumi was born in 1925 - 2015. After joining Gutai in 1955, Sumi becomes a member of Art Club, the group represented by Taro Okamoto. He participated in all the Gutai exhibitions from the first to the 21st one. Furthermore he has been invited to many exhibitions organized by public museums such as Tokyo City Modern Art Museum, Kyoto City Modern Art Museum, Hyogo Prefecture Museum, Osaka City Modern Art Museum, Ashiya City Museum, Chiba City Art Museum, Miyagi Prefecture Art Museum, Fukuoka City Art Museum, Kitakyushu City Art Museum, Itami City Art Museum, Shibuya Art Museum. He also held many exhibitions in the most famous galleries in Tokyo, Osaka and Itami. Sumi has been invited to the 45th Venice Biennale (Path to the East) with a project promoted by the Japan Foundation and the Italian Government. He held many exhibitions abroad, such as Galerie National du Jeu de Paume in Paris; New York's Martha Jackson Gallery, New York Cultural Exchange Center (solo exhibition) in US; Auckland Museum in Australia; Rome Contemporary Art Museum, Torino Figurative Gallery, Torino International Aesthetic Studio, Milan Art Center, Fondazione Morra in Naples. in Italy; Rauma Art Museum, Helsinki Art Academy in Finland; Rotterdam Design House in Netherlands; Off Center in Canada; and also in England and China. Plenty of his works have become property of public national museums all over the world. Sumi is today an active member of the AU Group and participates to the group exhibitions.He uses abaci, vibrators and combs for his works. While painting and performing Sumi always wears a pair of geta (woodden japanese shoes) and a bangasa (japanese umbrella), and uses a soroban (japanese abacus). But the use of these instruments is peculiar: sorobans are, for example, used, together with japanese ink to create straight and curved lines on papers and canvas. Bangasa is used to blow violently canvases, thus making them damaged. Vibrators are used to spread rhytmically colours on papers and canvases."(abc-arte.com )